The Wonderful Story of Ravalette

high and palm

the mightiest

tenantless, and

gibber in the

were nearly exhausted by reason of the want and privation he had undergone. His looks were haggard, and a pathetic pall, gloomy and te

rs gushed from between his fingers, and watered the ground at his feet. In other days the cypress, plant of sorrow, sprung up there, and throv

lly accepted, but mentally disbelieved, all the religious and psychologic faiths of Christendom; and, had any man even hinted at certain mysterious possibilities that have sinc

ly apparent that the mental structure sustained itself to a great degree at the expense of the muscles, his nervous system, as in all such organizations, being morbidly acute and sensitive. There was, naturally or organically, nothing about him either coarse, brutal, low or vulgar, and if, in the race of life, he exhibited any of those bad qualities, it was attributable to the rough circumstances attendant upon him, and the treatment he received fr

first plausible knave that came along, from the "friend" who borrowed half his cash, and undertook to in

ge nor small, and as a simple feature, was in no respect remarkable; but taken with the other features, was most decidedly so, for when under the influence of passion, excitement or emotion, there was an indescribable something about the al? and nostrils that told you that a volcano slumbered in that man's brain and heart, only it required a touch, a vent, in the right direction, to wake its fires and cause it to blaze forth vehemently, transforming him in an instant from a passive, uncomplaining man, into the embodiment of virtuous championship of the cause that was true, or into a demon of hatred and vindictive fury. The good prevailed; for the evil spasm was ever a spasm only-save in a very few marked cases, where he had suffered wrong

ible ever to forget, so different was he from all other

rnals of the person to whom t

ends of Time and the other side of Time-all of which my thirsty soul drank in as the sun-parched earth drinks in the grateful showers, or the sands of Zin the tears of weeping clouds. And these tales, these legends put to shame the wildest fictions of Germany and the terror-haunted Hartz. Particularly was I struck with a half hint that once escaped his lips, to the effect that some men on the earth, himself among the number, had pre?xisted on this sphere, and t

d by other souls, sometimes that of a permanently disembodied man of earth; at others, that of an inhabitant of the a?real spaces, who, thus embodied, roamed the earth at will. He, when closely questioned, declared his firm belief that he had lived down through many ages

idered it, of any one seriously claiming such extraordinary powers in the middle of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. As previously remarked, his complexion told that he was a sang mêlée-not a direct cross-but one in which at least seven distinct strains of blood intermingled, if they did not perfectly blend. Save when in high health and spirits, and weather extremely cold-at which times he was pale-his color was a rich, light bronze, like that of the youngsters one sees in such profusion, scampering like mad through the narrow and tortuous streets of Syrio-Arabic cities, demanding "Bucksheesh" from every Frank they see. With his large, broad, high brain, arched and open brow, his massive, elliptical and angular top-head, he was a marked man, and when his soul was at high tide, and his deep and mystic inspirations thrilled and filled him to the brim, his eye beamed with unearthly fire, glowed like the orbs of a Pythoness, and scintillated a light peculiarly its own. Whoever saw him then never forgot the sight, fo

personage of this narrative, I now pr

TNO

cter in the romance of "Dhoula Bel, or the Ma