To Demetrius was destined a briefer career.

All-conscious of his miserable degradation, loathing himself, and life, and mankind, he rushed back from the city into the Mahomedan camp; and entering, with a hurried step, the tent of the Caliph, he tore the turban from his brow, and cried aloud--"Oh, Abubeker! behold a God-forsaken wretch.

Think not it was the fear of death that led me to abjure my religion--the religion of my fathers--the only true faith.

No; it was the idol of Love that stood between my heart and heaven, darkening the latter with its shadow; and had I remained as true to God as I did to the Maiden of my love, I had not needed this." So saying, and ere the hand of Abubeker could arrest him, he drew a poniard from his embroidered vest, and the heart- blood of the renegade spouted on the royal robes of the successor of Mahomet.
* * * * * So grandly had James spooted this bloody story, that notwithstanding my sleepiness, his words whiles dirled through my marrow like quicksilver, and set all my flesh a grueing.

In the middle of it, he was himself so worked up, that twice he pulled his Kilmarnock from his head, silk-napkin, bandage and all, and threw them down with a thump on the table, which once wellnigh capsized the candlestick.
The porter and the stabbing, also, very nearly put me beside myself; and I felt so queerish and eerie when I took my hat to wish him a good-night--knowing that baith Nanse and Benjie would be neither to hold nor bind, it being now half-past ten o'clock--that, had it not been for the shame of the thing, and that I remembered being one of the King's gallant volunteers, I fear I would have asked James for the lend of his lantern, to show me down the dark close.
The reader will thus perceive that the adventure of the killing-coat, stuck alike in the measurement and in the making by Tammie Bodkin, was destined, in the great current of human events, to form a prominent feature, not only in my own history, but in that of worthy James Batter.
To me it might be considered as a passing breeze--having been accustomed to see and suffer a vast deal; but my friend, I fear much, will bear marks of it to his grave.