This old woman had a son called Behram, a brave, honest, worthy youth; many a time with his comrades he would pursue the Epirot bandits, who swooped down upon their valley and carried off their cattle.

Near to him dwelt the widow Khamko, whose husband had been shot at Tepelen, and who, with her son, little Ali, in her bosom, had sought refuge amongst these mountains.

Formerly Khamko was a gentle creature, but when they began to talk to her about the mad lady she also grew as crazy as ever the other was. She was ready to destroy the whole world, and over and over again she would utter the wildest things; she would like, she said, to see the whole four corners of the world set on fire so that the flames might shoot up on all four sides of it, and every living man within it, good as well as bad, might be burned. Listen not to such words. O Allah!

Behram was a very quiet fellow, not more than six and twenty years old; little Ali was scarce sixteen. But this wild, restless lad was already wont to wander for days together amongst the glens and mountains, and whenever he came home he invariably brought his mother money or jewels. And nobody knew whence he got them save Behram, to whom the youth confessed everything, for he loved him dearly.

Ali joined the company of the Epirot adventurers and with them he would go sacking villages, waylaying rich merchants, and shared with them the easily gotten booty.

And whenever he returned home without money, his mother. Khamko, would rail upon and chide him, and let him have no peace until he had engaged in fresh and more lucrative robberies.

Behram looked askance at the perilous ways of his young comrade, and as often as he was alone with him did his best to fill his mind with honest, noble ideas, which also seemed to make some impression on Ali, for he gradually began to abandon his marauding ways, and in order that he might still be able to get money for his mother, he fell to selling his sheep and his goats, and even parted with his long, silver-mounted musket. At last he had nothing left but his sword. Dame Khamko, meanwhile, scolded Ali unmercifully. If he wanted to eat, let him go seek his bread, she said. And the lad wandered through the woods and thickets, and lived for a long time on the berries of the forest. At last, one day, when he was wellnigh famished and in the depths of misery, he came upon an Armenian inn-keeper standing in the doorway of his lonely little tavern. Ali rushed upon him, sword in hand, like a wolf perishing with hunger. The Armenian was a worthy old fellow, and when he saw Ali he said to him:

"What dost thou want, my son?"

The honest, open look of the old man shamed Ali, and casting down his eyes, he replied: "I want to give thee this sword." Yet the moment before he had determined to slay him with it.

The Armenian took the sword from him, and gave him ten sequins in exchange for it, besides meat and drink. So Ali returned home without his sword.

When Dame Khamko saw her son return home disarmed she was greatly incensed and exclaimed:

"What hast thou done with thy sword?"

"I have sold it," answered Ali, resolutely.

At this the mother flew into a violent rage, and catching up a bludgeon, belabored Ali with it until she was tired. The big, muscular lad allowed himself to be beaten, and neither wept nor said a word, nor even tried to defend himself.

"And now dost see that spindle?" cried Dame Khamko. "Learn to spin the thread and turn the bobbins quickly; thou shalt not eat idle bread at home, I can tell thee. A man who can sell his sword is fit for nothing but to sit beside a distaff."

So Ali sat down to spin.

For a couple of days he endured the insults which his mother heaped upon him, and on the third day he returned to the Armenian, to whom he had sold his sword, robbed him of and slew of him with it, plundered and burned down his house, and from thenceforth became such a famous robber that the whole countryside lived in mortal terror of him.

Dame Khamko lived a long time after this event, and ruined her son's soul altogether by urging him to kill and slay without mercy, till one fine day her son murdered her likewise, and thus added her blood also to the blood of those whom, at his mother's instigation, he had cruelly murdered.

And this lad became the Pasha of Janina. Ali Tepelenti!

Through what an ocean of treachery, perjury, robbery, and homicide he had to wade before he attained to that eminence! How often was he not so reduced as to have nothing left but his sword and his crafty brain? But many a time, in the midst of his most brilliant successes, in the very plenitude of his power, he would bethink him of the two quiet little huts where he and Behram had been wont to dwell. He never heard of Behram now, but he used frequently to think in those days and wonder what would have become of himself if he had listened to Behram's words and lived a quiet, contented life. 'Tis true he would not have been so mighty a man as he was now, but would he not have been a much happier one?

Once, when he was a very great potentate, he had visited the little village in the glen in which they had hidden away together. But nobody would tell him anything of Behram. He had disappeared none knew whither. Perhaps he had died since then!

CHAPTER VIII
THE PEN OF MAHMOUD

Amongst those who were so liberated was a dervish of the Nimetullahita order, who, after this incident was over, arose, sought out the Sultan and said to him, "Thou art a poor potentate. Thou art the most sorry of all the caliphs. Thou art the greatest son of suffering10 among all the sultans who have gone before thee, or shall come after thee. I thank thee for delivering me from the hands of the Vechabites,11 and as a reward, therefore, I bring thee a gift which, even when they left me without any raiment, I was still able to conceal from them."

And with that he produced a writing-reed and gave it to the Sultan, and when Mahmoud asked him in what way he had concealed it from the eyes of the robbers, he explained how he had cunningly thrust it into his thick black beard, where nobody had perceived it.

Mahmoud accepted the gift of the dervish, and put it where he put his other curiosities; but he did not think of it for very long, and gradually it escaped his memory altogether.

One day, however, when one of his favorite damsels, moved by curiosity, had induced him to show her the treasures of his palace, and they came to the spot where lay the pen of the dervish, the damsel suddenly cried out, and said that she had seen the pen move.

The Sultan looked in that direction, and, observing nothing, treated the whole affair as a joke, and went on showing the damsel the accumulated relics and curiosities of centuries which thirteen successive Sultans had stored up in the khazné or treasury, and then gave the damsel permission to choose for herself whichever of these treasures might please her most.

Many costly things were there covered with gems, and worth, each one of them, half a kingdom; there were also rare and precious relics, and antiquities rich in historical associations. But the Sultan's pet damsel chose for herself none of these things; to the amazement of the Padishah, she only asked for this simple black pen.

Mahmoud was astonished, but he granted the damsel her wish, and making light of it, he gave her the writing-reed which was fashioned out of a simple bamboo cane, and was nothing very remarkable even at that.

The odalisk took the pen away with her to her room, and waited from morning to night to see it move. But the pen calmly rested where she had placed it all day long and all night too, and the odalisk began to be sorry that she had not rather selected for herself some other more precious thing instead of the object of her curiosity; but one evening, when the Sultan was visiting her in her flowery chamber, and they were holding sweet converse together, they suddenly heard in the room, where nobody was present but themselves, a faint sound as if some one were writing in great haste, the scratching of a pen on the extended parchment was distinctly audible.

They both looked in the direction of the sound, and words failed them in their astonishment, for behold! the writing-reed was half raised in the air, just as when one is holding it in his hand, and it seemed to be writing of its own accord on the parchment extended beneath it.

The damsel trembled for terror, while the Sultan, who was a stranger alike to fear or superstition, imagining that perhaps a spider had got into the upper part of the reed, and consequently made it move up and down, and anxious to convince his favorite thereof, approached the table, and took up the pen in order to shake the spider out of it. But there was nothing at all there, and the pen went on writing of its own accord.

The Sultan himself began to be astonished at this phenomenon. What the pen seemed to be so diligently writing remained a hidden script, however, for its point had not been dipped in ink. Wishing, therefore, to put it to the test, the Sultan dipped the point of the reed in a little box full of that red balsamic salve with which Turkish girls are wont to paint their lips, and then placed it on a smooth, clean sheet of parchment, whereupon it again arose, and wrote in bright, plainly intelligible letters these words, "Mahmoud! Mahmoud!"

The Sultan's own heart began to beat when he saw his own name written before his eyes, and he inquired with something like consternation, "What dost thou want of me?"

The pen immediately wrote down again these two words, "Mahmoud! Mahmoud!" and then lay still.

"That is my name," said the Sultan; "but who then art thou. O invisible spirit?"

The pen again arose and wrote beneath the name of Mahmoud this name also, "Halil Patrona!"

Mahmoud trembled at this name. It was the name of a man who had been murdered by one of his ancestors, and if the apparition of a spirit be terrible in itself, how much more the spirit of a murdered man!

"What dost thou want here?" exclaimed the terrified Sultan.

The pen answered, "To warn thee!"

"Perchance a danger threatens me, eh?" inquired the Sultan.

"'Tis near thee!" wrote the pen.

"Whence comes this danger?"

And now the pen wrote a long row of letters, and this was the purport thereof, "A great danger from the East, a greater from the West, a greater still from the North, and here at home the greatest of all."

"Where will the Faithful fight?" asked the Sultan.

"In the whole realm!" was the reply.

"Near which towns?"

"Near every town and within every town."

"How long will the war last?"

"Nine years."

It was now the year eighteen hundred and twenty, and there was not a sign of danger at any point of the vast boundaries of the Turkish empire.

The Sultan permitted himself one more question: "Tell me, shall I triumph in these wars?"

The pen replied, "Thou wilt not."

"Who will be my enemies?"

There the pen stopped short, as if it were reflecting on something; at last it wrote down, "Another time."

The Sultan did not understand this answer, so he repeated his question, and now the pen wrote, "Ask in another place!"

"Where?"

"Alone."

Evidently it would not answer the question in the presence of the Sultan's favorite. It did not trust her.

The Sultan almost believed that he was dreaming, but now his favorite damsel also drew near and, leaning on Mahmoud's shoulder, stammered forth, "Prithee, mighty spirit, wilt thou answer me?"

And the pen replied, "I will."

The woman asked, "Tell me, will Mahmoud love me to the death?"

The Sultan was somewhat offended. "By the prophet!" cried he, "that thou shouldst put such a question!"

But what is not a living woman capable of asking?

The pen quivered gently as it wrote down the words, "He will love thee till thou diest."

"And when shall I die?"

To this the pen gave no answer.

In vain the favorite pressed her question. How many years, how many months, how many days had she to live? The spirit answered nothing.

"And how shall I die?" asked the woman.

The Sultan shivered at this senseless question, and would have made the girl withdraw; but, in an instant, the pen had written out the answer, "Thou shalt be killed."

The woman grew as pale as a wax figure, and stammered, "Who will kill me?"

Both of them awaited in terror and with baited breath what the pen would answer, and the pen, taking good care not to form a single illegible letter, wrote on the parchment, "Mahmoud!"

The favorite fell unconscious into the arms of the Sultan, who, carrying her away, laid her on the divan, watching over her till she came to herself again, and then comforting her with wise saws.

An evil, mocking spirit dwelt in the reed, he said, consolingly, who only uttered its forebodings to agitate their hearts. "Did it not say also that I should love thee to the death? How then could I slay thee? A lying spirit dwelleth in that reed!"

And yet the Sultan himself was trembling all the time.

That night no sleep visited his eyes, and early in the morning he took the reed from his favorite by force, telling her that he was going to throw it into the fire.

But he did not throw it into the fire. On the contrary, the Sultan frequently produced it, and, inasmuch as he sometimes convicted the spirit of a false prophecy, he began to regard the whole thing as a sort of magic hocus-pocus, invented by the kindly Fates to amuse mankind by its oddity, and he frequently made it serve as a plaything for the whole harem, gathering the odalisks together and compelling the enchanted pen to answer all sorts of petty questions, as, for instance, "How old is the old kadun-keit-khuda?" "How many sequins are in the purse of the Kizlar-Agasi?" "At what o'clock did the Sultan awake?" "When will the Sultan's tulips arrive?" "How many heads were thrown to-day into the sea?" "Is Sadi, the poet, still alive?" etc., etc. Or they forced the pen to translate the verses of Victor Hugo into Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. And the pen patiently accomplished everything. At last it became quite a pet plaything with the odalisks, and the favorite Sultana altogether forgot the evil prophecy which it had written down for her.

Now it chanced one day that the famous filibusterer Microconchalys, who had for a long time disturbed the archipelago with his cruisers, and defied the whole fleet of the Sultan, encountered in the open sea, off Candia, a British man-of-war, which he was mad enough to attack with three galleys. In less than an hour all three galleys were blown to the bottom of the sea, nothing of them remaining on the surface of the water but their well-known flags, which Morrison, the victorious English captain, conveyed to Stambul, and there presented them to the Divan.

Boundless was the joy of the Sultan at the death of the vexatious filibusterer, and there was joy in the harem also, for a feast of lamps was to be held there the same night, and Morrison was to be presented to the Divan on the following day to be loaded with gifts and favors.

At night, therefore, there was great mirth among the odalisks. The Sultan himself was drunk with joy, wine, and love, and the hilarious Sultana brought forth the magic pen to make them mirth, and compelled it to answer the drollest questions, as, for instance, "How many hairs are there in Mahmoud's head?" "How many horses are there in the stable?" and "How many soldiers are there on the sea?" And, finally, laughing aloud, she commanded it to tell her how many hours she had to live.

Ah, surely a life full of joy lay before her! But the Sultan shook his head; one ought not to tempt God with such questions.

The pen would not write.

Then the favorite cried angrily, "Answer! or I will compel thee to count all the drops of water in the Black Sea, from here to Jenikale in the Crimea!"

At these words the pen, with a quivering movement, arose, and scratching the paper with a shrill sound, as if it would weep and moan, wrote down some utterly unintelligible characters, with the number "8" beneath them, and surrounded the whole writing with a circle to signify that there was nothing more to come.

Everybody laughed. It was plain that the spirit also loved its little joke, and was angry with the Sultana for torturing it with so many silly questions.

It was then the third hour after midnight, all the clocks in the room had at that moment struck the hour. After that the odalisks fell a-dancing again, and the eunuch-buffoons exhibited a puppet show on a curtained stage, which greatly diverted the ladies of the harem. But the number "8" would not go out of the head of the favorite, and as all the clocks in the room, one after the other, struck four, she took out the pen, and with an incredulous, mocking smile on her face, but with horror in her heart, she asked, "Come, tell me again, if thou hast not forgotten, how many hours have I got to live?"

The pen wrote down the number "7."

Those who stood around now began to tremble. But Mahmoud treated the whole affair as a joke, and assured them that the pen was only making them sport. And again they went on diverting themselves.

An hour later the clocks, in the usual sequence, struck the hour of five. And now the favorite stole aside, and placing the reed on a table repeated her former question. And the pen wrote down the number "6."

Thus, with each hour, the number indicated was lesser by one than the previous number. The Sultan observed the gloom of his favorite, and to drive away her sad thoughts, compelled her to retire to her bedchamber, where she enjoyed two hours of sweet repose, leaning on the Sultan's breast; whereupon the Sultan arose and went into his dressing-room, for he had to hold a divan, or council.

The first thing the favorite did on awaking was to look at the time, and she perceived that it was now seven o'clock. She immediately hastened to interrogate the pen, and asked the question of it with fear and trembling; and now the pen wrote down the number "4."

The Sultan himself sent for Morrison.

The English sailor was proudly conscious of owning no master but the sea. During his long roamings in the East and South he had always made it a point of visiting all the barbarous chiefs and princes who came in his way. He regarded them simply as freaks of nature, whose absurd rites and customs he meant to thoroughly investigate in order that he might make a note of them in his diary, and he even went the length of adopting for a time their manners and customs, if he could not get what he wanted in any other way.

A summons to appear before the divan was scarcely of more importance in his eyes than an invitation to a wild elephant hunt, or initiation into the mysteries of Mumbo Jumbo, or an ascent in the perilous aerial ship of Montgolfier. He donned a dark-blue-colored garment and a plumed three-cornered hat, and condescended to allow himself to be conducted by the ichoglanler specially told off to do him honor to the splendid canopied, six-oared pinnace, which was to take him to the palace.

They escorted him first to the Gate of Fountains, and left him waiting for a few moments in the Chamber of Lions, allowing him in the meanwhile to draw a pocket-book from his breast-pocket and make a rapid sketch of all the objects around him. They then relieved him of his short sword, as none may approach the Sultan with arms, and threw across his shoulders an ample caftan trimmed with ermine. He did not reflect for the moment what a distinction this was. His only feeling was a slight surprise that he should be dressed in green down to his very heels, as, with the dragoman on his left hand, he was conducted into the Hall of the Seven Viziers, where the Sultan sat in the midst of his grandees.

Morrison greeted the Padishah very handsomely, just as he would have greeted King George IV. or King Charles X., perhaps.

"Bow to the ground—right down to the ground, milord!" whispered the dragoman in his ears.

"I'll be damned if I do!" replied Morrison. "It is not my habit to go down on my knees in uniform!"

"But that was why they put the caftan on you," whispered the dragoman, half in joke. "'Tis the custom here."

"And a deuced bad custom, too," growled Morrison; and, after reflecting for a moment or two, he hit upon the idea of letting his hat fall to the ground, and then bent down as if to pick it up again. But, by way of compensation, immediately after righting himself he stood as stiff and straight as if he were determined never to bend his head again, though the roof were to fall upon him in consequence.

The Sultan addressed a couple of brief words to the sailor, metamorphosed by the dragoman into a floridly adulatory rigmarole, which he represented to be a faithful version of the Sultan's ineffable salutation. In effect he told the sailor that he was a terrible hippopotamus, an oceanic elephant, who had ground to death countless crocodiles with his glorious grinders, trampled them to pieces with his mighty hoofs, and torn them limb from limb with his trunk, and had therefore merited that the sublime Sultan should cover him with the wings of his mantle. Let him, therefore, ask as a reward whatever he chose, even to the half of the Padishah's kingdom. I may add that if any one had in those days actually asked for half of the Sultan's kingdom, he would probably have got that part of it which lies underground.

Morrison thanked the Sultan for his liberal offer, and asked that he might see the favorite wife of the Grand Signior.

At these words the dragoman turned pale, but the Sultan turned still paler. The convulsive twitching of the muscles of his face betrayed his strong revulsion of feeling, and, lowering his heavy, shaggy eyebrows, he dashed at the sailor a look of deadly rage, while a heavy sigh escaped from his deep chest.

The Englishman only regretted that he could not acquit himself as creditably in this play of eyebrows. His own were small, of a bright blonde color, and somewhat pointed.

The dragoman, however, could read an ominous meaning in this deep silence.

"O glorious giaour, rosebud of thy nation!" whispered he, "fleet water-spider of the ocean, ask not so senseless a thing from the Grand Signior! Behold his wrathful eyes, and ask for something else; ask for his most precious treasure; ask for all his damsels, if thou wilt, but ask not to see the face of his favorite. Thou knowest not the meaning thereof."

Morrison shrugged his shoulders. "I want neither his treasure nor his damsels. I only want to see his favorite wife."

Mahmoud trembled, but not a word did he speak. Two tear-drops twinkled in his dark eyes and ran down his handsome, manly face.

At this the Viziers leaped to their feet, and it was evident from their agitated cries that they expected the Sultan to order the presumptuous infidel to be cut down there and then.

The dragoman, in despair, flung himself at the seaman's feet.

"O prince of all whales!" he cried. "O unbelieving dog! Thou seest me, a true believer, lying at thy feet. O wine-drinking giaour! Why wilt thou entangle me with the words which the Sultan said to thee through me? Art thou not ashamed to place thy foot on the neck of the lord of princes? Ask some other thing!"

In vain. The sailor changed not a muscle of his face. He simply repeated, with imperturbable sang-froid, the words:

"I want to see his favorite wife."

The Viziers rushed at him with a howl of fury, but Morrison merely threw back the caftan which had been folded across his breast, revealing his dreaded uniform and the decorations appended thereto—memorials of his services at Alexandria and Trafalgar. That, he thought, would quite suffice to preserve him from any violence.

But the Sultan leaped down from his throne, beckoned with his hand to the Viziers, and whispered some words in the ear of the Kislar-Agasi, who thereupon withdrew. This whispered word went the round of the Viziers, who straightway did obeisance and disappeared in three different directions through the three doors of the room, their places being taken by two black slaves in red fezes and white robes, with broad-bladed, crooked swords in their hands. Only the Sultan remained behind there with the sailor.

The clocks in the rooms of the Seraglio struck a quarter to ten. The pen of the dervish in reply to the question of the favorite as to how many hours she had to live now wrote down "¼."

At that moment the Kislar-Agasi entered. The favorite went to meet him, trembling like a lost lamb coming face to face with a wolf.

The Kislar-Agasi bowed deeply, and beckoned to the serving-women of the Seraglio standing behind him to come forward.

"Has the Sultana accomplished the prescribed ablutions?" said he.

"Yes, my lord!"

"Gird her round the body with a triple row of pearls; fasten on her turban the bird of paradise with the diamond clasp. Put on her gold embroidered caftan."

The favorite let them do what they would with her without saying a word.

The waiting-woman, covering the favorite's face with a light fan, thickly sewn with tiny gold stars, conducted her to the door which led to the Porcelain Chamber, and there the Kislar-Agasi left her, after indicating whither they had to go next.

Guards stood in couples before each one of the doors; the last door they came to was only protected by a curtain. This was the door of the cupola chamber where the Sultan had received the sailor.

The favorite could not see the sailor because of the lofty projecting wings of the throne; she only saw the Sultan sitting on a divan. She hastened up to him, and when she stood before him she suddenly caught sight of the stranger regarding her with coldly curious eyes. Shrinking away with terror, she screamed out "Giaour!" and, wrapping her veil more closely around her, turned to the Sultan for protection. Then Mahmoud seized the damsel's trembling hand with one of his, and with the other raised the veil from the face of his dearest wife in the presence of the stranger.

The girl shrieked as if her face had been bitten by a serpent; then she fell at the knees of the Sultan, and looked at the face of the Grand Signior with an appealing glance for mercy. In the eyes of the caliph of caliphs the moisture of human compassion sparkled. Poor Sultana! who would not have pitied her?

Morrison made a courtly bow, and the dragoman not being present, he expressed his thanks by using the well-known Turkish salutation, "Salám aláküm!" The extraordinary charms of the damsel made no more impression upon him than the sight of any ordinarily pretty lady at a court presentation at home would have done.

The damsel meanwhile writhed in torments at the feet of the Sultan, who, having had enough of it himself, covered her with her veil, and beckoned to the Kislar-Agasi. He raised the damsel, and carried her behind the curtains that surrounded the throne; the same instant the two eunuch guards standing beside the throne also disappeared.

The Sultan listened and covered his eyes.

After a few moments of deep silence, it seemed to the sailor as if he heard a long sigh behind the curtains. The Sultan shivered in every limb, and immediately afterwards the clocks in the Seraglio began to strike; they struck eleven.

Then the Sultan arose from his place and said, with a deep sigh:

"'Twas the will of Allah!" Then he descended from the divan and said to Morrison in the purest Italian, "Thou didst see her; was she not beautiful?"

Morrison, astonished to hear Italian spoken by the Sultan, who, as a rule, never spoke a word save through an interpreter, in his amazement could not find an answer to this question quick enough.

"Come now and see her once more," continued the Grand Signior, and with these words he went towards the curtains.

Morrison fell back confounded. The rosy-red damsel of a few moments before lay there pale, lifeless, at full length, her lips and eyes closed, her bosom motionless. A thin red line was visible round her beautiful white neck—the mark of the silken cord!

"But this is brutal!" exclaimed the sailor, beside himself with indignation.

The Sultan coldly replied, "Whenever a Christian man beholds the face of one of our women, that woman must die." He then signified to the sailor that he was dismissed.

Morrison hastened from the room, immediately hoisted his anchor, and the same night sailed out of the Golden Horn, everywhere pursued by the memory of the beautiful Sultana, whom he had killed with a glance of his eyes.

"Behold, behold!" cried the Sultan, pressing the cold, murdered limbs to his bosom; "the dzhin told the truth. Mahmoud loved thee to the death, and yet Mahmoud slew thee!"

These words he repeated two or three times to the dead woman, and then, descending the steps of the throne, rent his garments across his breast, and looking up to heaven with tearful eyes, exclaimed:

"And now let the rest come too!"

And the rest did come. It came from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south—four empire-subverting tempests, which shook the strong trunk of Osman to its very roots, and scattered its leaves afar.

Ali Pasha of Janina was the first to kindle the blood-red flames of war in the west, and soon they spread from the Morea to Smyrna. In the north the crusading banners of Yprilanti raised up a fresh foe against Mahmoud, and the cries of "the sacred army" re-echoed from the walls of Athens and the banks of the Danube and the summits of Olympus. In Stambul the unbridled hosts of the Janissaries shed torrents of blood among the Greeks of the city on the tidings of every defeat from outside. And when the peril from every quarter had reached its height, the Shah of Persia fell upon the crumbling realm from the east, and captured the rich city of Bagdad.

And still Mahmoud had the desire to live—to live and rule. A pettier spirit would have fled from the Imperial palace and taken refuge among the palm-trees of Arabia Felix when it recognized that an endless war encompassed it on every side, that to conquer was impossible, and that the nearest enemy was the most dangerous. A mine of gunpowder had been dug beneath the throne, and around the throne a mob of madmen were hurrying aimlessly to and fro with lighted torches. And yet it was Mahmoud's pleasure to remain sitting on that throne.

Frequently he would steal furtively at night from his harem. Alone, unattended, he would contemplate the flight of the stars from the roof of the Seraglio, and would listen to the nocturnal massacres and the shrieks of the dying in the streets of Stambul. He would watch how the conflagrations burned forth in two or three places at once, both in Pera and Galata their lordships the Janissaries were working their will. And he felt that cruelly cold piercing wind which began to blow from the north, so that in the rooms of the Seraglio the shivering odalisks began to draw rugs and other warm coverings over their tender limbs. Never had any one in Stambul felt that cold wind before. Whence came it, and what did it signify?

Mahmoud knew whence it came and what it signified, and he had the courage to look steadily in the face of the future, in which he discerned not a single ray of hope.

CHAPTER IX
THE CIRCASSIAN AND HIS FAMILY

At the head of an opening in the chain a rocky scaffolding was visible, about one hundred feet in height, as regularly disposed as if a number of gigantic dice had been designedly placed there one on the top of another. By a marvellous freak of Nature, this rocky conglomeration was provided apparently with towers, bastions, and buttresses; so that, viewed from afar, it looked like a gigantic fortress, and, on the very first glance at it, the thought involuntarily occurs to one that if but four guns were planted on those summits a few hundred men might defend themselves against an army-corps. At the rear of the hill, moreover, where the cataracts make any approach impossible, the flocks and herds of the defending army could go on contentedly browsing for years together.

A foolish idea! To whom would it ever occur to attack Himri, that tiny Circassian village with scarcely five hundred inhabitants, who have nothing in the world but their kine, their goats, and their pretty girls? Who would ever come against Himri with guns and an army—against those most worthy men who all their life long have never done anything but make cheese and tan hides, who only exercise their valor against the devastating bands of bears, and only extirpate with their long, far-reaching muskets the wild goats of the rocks?

They do not even build their houses on the summit of this wondrous fortress of Nature, but among the rocks below, constructing them prettily of regularly disposed logs, with roofs like dove-cots, surrounding them with linden-trees and flower-gardens. And so far from keeping a visitor at bay with cannon-shots, they go forth to meet him, conduct him into their villages, hospitably entertain him, insist on his tarrying long with them; and if the visitor be a handsome young fellow, the loveliest eyes that ever smiled and wept grow moist at his departure. Who amongst those who have been lulled to sleep in Himri by the songs of the lovely and bewitching Circassian girls could ever have dreamed that the time would come when these mountain walls all round about would be dyed red with the blood of thousands and thousands of strangers, who came thither to seek death, and found what they sought?

The house of the meritorious sheik differed in no respect from the dwellings of the other inhabitants. It also was entirely built of timber, consisted of four rooms leading one out of another, and two venerable nut-trees stood in front of it.

Kasi Mollah sits outside, leaning tranquilly against the door-post beneath the projecting eaves, both sides of which are covered by large scarlet-runners, plaiting with great care and solemnity a whip out of twelve fine thongs of kid-skin hanging on a crooked nail.

Squatting on the ground beside him on a bear-skin sits a peculiar-looking stranger. Even if you had not seen it in his features and clothing, his mules standing before the door would have told you that he did not belong to these parts. He was, indeed, a Greek merchant from Smyrna, who visited Circassia every year to purchase kid-skins—or, so he said. He had three palaces in Smyrna; but it is scarcely credible that he could have acquired them by his kid-skins only. At any rate, his mules were laden now with whole bundles of furs and pelts, and the merchant was toasting his host in a sour beverage, made by the Circassian from horse's milk, the evil odor of which he was striving to dispel with the smoke of good Latakia tobacco.

It was for him also that the Circassian was making that long mule-driving whip of thongs of twelve different colors, serpentine in shape, and plaited at the ends with beautiful white horse-hair; and when it was ready he smacked it so vigorously, by way of showing it off, that the merchant could scarce save his eyes from it.

"A pretty whip, and a good whip," he said, at last, in order that its owner might leave off cracking it.

"I'll very soon prove whether it is a good whip or not," said the Circassian, without moving a muscle of his brown, oval-shaped, apathetic face; and with that he began to make the handle of the whip out of fine copper wire of a fantastically ornate pattern nicely studded with leaden stars.

"How will you prove that it is a good whip?" asked the merchant.

"Stop till my children come home."

"Your children?"

"Yes, naturally. I should not think of proving it on other people's children."

"You are surely not going to prove the whip on your own?"

"On whom else, then? Children should be whipped in order that they may be good, that they may be kept in order, and that they may not get nonsense into their heads. 'Tis also a good thing to train them betimes to endure greater sorrow by giving them a foretaste of lesser ones, so that when they grow up to man's estate, and real misfortune overtakes them, they may be able to bear it. My father used always to beat me, and now I bless him for it, for it made a man of me. Children are always full of evil dispositions, and you do well to drive such things out of them with the whip."

A peculiar smile passed across the long, olive-colored face of the Greek at these words; he seemed to be only smiling to himself. Then he fixed his sly, coal-black eyes on the sheik, and inquired, sceptically:

"But surely you don't beat your children without cause?"

"Oh, there's always cause. Children are always doing something wrong; you have only to keep an eye on them to see that, and whoever neglects to punish them acts like him who should forbear to pull up the weeds in his garden."

"Kasi Mollah," said the Greek, puffing two long clouds of smoke through his nostrils, "I tell you, children are not your speciality, for you do not understand how to bring them up. In the whole land of Circassia there is none who knows how to bring up children."

"Then how comes it that our girls are the fairest and our youths the bravest on the face of the earth?"

"Your girls would be still more beautiful and your lads still more valiant if you brought them up in the land where dwell the descendants of white-bosomed Briseis and quick-footed Achilles. O Hellas!"

The Greek began to grow rapturous at the pronunciation of these classical names, and in his excitement blew sufficient smoke out of his chibook to have clouded all Olympus.

"I tell you. Kasi Mollah," continued he, "that children are the gifts of God, and he who beats a child lifts his whip, so to speak, against God Himself, for His hands defend their little bodies. You do but sin against your children. Give them to me!"

"You are a Christian; I am a Mussulman. How, then, shall you bring up my children?"

"Fear nothing. I do not want to keep them for myself; I mean rather to get them such positions as will enable them to rise to the utmost distinction. I would place them with some leading pasha, perhaps with the Padishah himself, or, at any rate, with one of his Viziers, all of whom have a great respect for Circassians."

"Thank you. Midas, thank you; but I don't mean to give them up."

"Prithee, prithee, call me not Midas; that is an ominous name which I do not understand. You might have learned any time these ten years, when I first came to buy pelts from you, that my name is Leonidas Argyrocantharides, and that I am a direct descendant of the hero Leonidas, who fell at Thermopylæ with his three hundred valiant Spartans. One of my great-great-grandfathers, moreover, fell at Issus, by the side of the great Alexander, from a mortal blow dealt to him by a Persian satrap. If you do not believe me, look at this ancient coin, and at these others, and at this whole handful which are in my purse, all of which were struck under Philip of Macedon, or else under Michel Kantakuzenos or Constantine Porphyrogenitus, all of whom were powerful Greek emperors in Constantinople, which now they call Stambul, and built the church of St. Sophia, where now the dervishes say their prayers; and then look at the figures which are stamped on these coins, and tell me if they do not resemble me to a hair. It is so. No, you need not give me back the money; give me rather the two little children."

The Circassian, who had taken the purse with the simple intention of comparing the figures on the coins with the face of the merchant, drew the strings of the purse tight again at this offer, and thrust it back into the merchant's bosom.

"Thank you," said he, dryly. "I deal in the skins of goats, not in the skins of men."

The face of the merchant showed surprise in all its features. Not every man possesses the art of controlling his countenance so quickly, especially when his self-command is put to so sudden and severe a test. The Georgians, more to the south, were a much more manageable race of men. With them one could readily drive a bargain for their daughters and give them a good big sum on account for their smallest children. One could purchase of them children from two to three years of age at from ten to twenty golden denarii a head, and sell them in ten years' time for just as many thousands of piastres to some illustrious pasha. This was how Leonidas was able to build himself palaces at Smyrna.

"You talk nonsense, my worthy Chorbadzhi," said the merchant, when he had somewhat recovered himself. "Shall I prove it to you? Well, then, in the first place, you do not sell your children, and, in the second place, why shouldn't you sell them? If a Circassian wrapped in a bear-skin comes to you and asks you for your daughter, would you not give her to him? And at the very outside he would only give you a dozen cows for her, and as many asses. I, on the other hand, offer you a thousand piastres for them from good, worthy, influential beys, or perhaps from the Sultan himself, and yet you haggle about it."

The sheik's face began to show wrath and irritation. He was well aware that the merchant was now dealing in sophisms, though his simple intellect could not quite get at the root of their fallacy. It was plain that there was a great difference between a Circassian dressed in bear-skin, who carries off a girl in exchange for a dozen cows, and the Captain-General of Rumelia, who is ready to give a thousand ducats for her—and yet he preferred the gentleman in bear-skins.

The Greek, meanwhile, appeared to be studying the features of the Circassian with an attentive eye, watching what impression his words had produced, like the experimenting doctor who tries the effects of his medicaments in anima vili.

"But I know that you will give them. Kasi Mollah," he resumed, filling up his chibook. "No doubt you have promised them to another trader. Well, well! you are a cunning rogue. Merchants of Dirbend or Bagdad have no doubt offered you more for them. They can afford it, they do such a roaring business. Those perfidious Armenians! They buy the children for a mere song, and sell them when they are eight or nine years old to the pashas, so that not one of them lives to see his twentieth year, but all die miserably in the mean time. I don't do such things. I am an honest man, with whom business is but a labor of love, and who is just to all men. It is sufficient for me to say that I was born where Aristides used to live. Numbers and numbers of my ancestors were in the Areopagus, and one of my great-great-uncles was an archon. Do not imagine, therefore, that I would do for every foolish fellow what I offer to do for you. I only do kindnesses to my chosen friends; the ties of friendship are sacred to me. Castor and Pollux, Theseus and Pirithous are to me majestic examples of that excellent brotherhood of kindred spirits which I constantly set before me. Wherever I have gone people have always blessed me; nay, did I but let them, they would kiss my feet. The daughter of a Georgian peasant whose father trusted me is now the first waiting-woman of the wife of the Governor of Egypt. Is that glory enough for you! The daughter of a poor goatherd, whom I picked up from the mire, is now the premier pipe-filler of the Pasha of Salonica. A high office that, if you like! What Ganymede was to Jove in those classical ages— Ah! the tears gush from my eyes at the sound of that word. O Hellas!"

The Circassian allowed his good friend to weep on, considering it a sufficient answer to let his dark bushy eyebrows frown still more fiercely, if possible, over his downcast eyes. Then he caught up a hammer and hammered away with great fury at the handle he had prepared for the whip, riveting the wire with copper studs.

"Kasi Mollah, hitherto I have only been joking, but now I am going to speak in earnest," resumed Leonidas Argyrocantharides, raising his voice that he might be heard through the hammering. "You should bethink you seriously of your children's destiny. I am your old friend, your old acquaintance; my sole wish is for your welfare. I love your children as much as if they were my own, and the tears gush from my eyes whenever I part from them. What will become of them when they grow up? I know that while you are alive it will be well with them, but how about afterwards? You may die to-morrow, or the next day; who can tell? We are all in the hands of God. Now I'll tell you something. Mind. I'm not joking or making it all up. I know for certain that Topal Pasha has been informed that you have two lovely children. Some flighty traders of Erzeroum revealed the fact to him. They are wont to trade with you here, and he has paid them half the stipulated sum down on condition that they bring the children to him. Now this pasha is a filthy, brutal, rake-hell sort of fellow, the pressure of whose foot is no laughing matter, I can tell you; a horrible, hideous, cruel man. I can give you proofs of it. And these merchants have made a contract with him, and have engaged, under the penalty of losing their heads, to deliver your children to him within a twelvemonth. What do you say? You'll throw them down into the abyss, eh? Ah! they are not as foolish as I am. They will not openly profess that they have come here for your children, as I do, but they will lie in wait for them when they go to the forest, and when nobody perceives it they will clap them on the back of a horse and off they'll go with them, so that nobody will know under what sky to look for them. Or, perhaps, when you yourself are going along the road with them, they'll lay a trap for you, shoot you neatly through the head, and bolt with your children. Well, that will be a pretty thing, won't it? You had better not throw me over."

The Circassian did not know what to answer—words were precious things to him—but he thought all the more. While the merchant was speaking to him, his reflections carried him far. He saw his children in the detested marble halls, he saw them standing in shamefully gorgeous garments, waiting upon the smiling despot, who stroked their tender faces with his hands, and the blood rushed to his face as he saw his children blush and tremble beneath that smile. Ah, at that thought he began to lash about him so vigorously with the whip that was in his hand, that the Greek rolled about on the bear-skin in terror, holding his hands to his ears.

"Do not crack that whip so loudly, my dear son," said he, "or you'll drive away all my mules. I really believe your whip is a very good one, but you need not test it to the uttermost. I thank you for making it; but now, pray, put it down. I must go. It is a good thing you have not knocked out one of my eyes. You certainly have a vigorous way of enjoying yourself. But let us speak sensibly. Do you believe that I am an honest man, or not?"

At this the Circassian did not nod his head.

"Very well, then. It is natural that you should believe, you ought to believe it. Since Pausanias there has not been a sharper among my nation. He was the last faithless Greek, and they walled him up in the temple. I am a man without guile, as you are well aware. But I am more than that, more than you suspect. Oho! in this shabby, worn-out caftan of mine dwells something which you do not dream of. Oho! I know what I really am. I am on friendly terms with great men, with many great men, standing high in the empire, whose fame has never reached your ears. In the palm of this hand I hold Hellas, in the other the realm of Osman. I shake the whole world when I move. Why do I take all this trouble? Oh, for the sake of your holy shades, Miltiades, Themistocles, Lysippus, and Demosthenes! for the sake of your shades, O Solon, O Lycurgus, O Pythagoras, and a time is coming in which I will prove it! It is thy memory, Athene, which inspires me to heap up treasures for the future! Thou, O holy Goddess of Liberty, hath whispered in my ear that thou canst make use of the lowly as well as of the mighty to promote thy cause!" Here the merchant leaped to his feet in his enthusiasm, and, extending his hand towards the Circassian exclaimed, "Kasi Mollah, you groan beneath the yoke just as much as we do; let us join hands against our oppressors, and let us gradually melt the hearts of their leaders by the strongest of fires, by the fire of the eyes of the Greek and Circassian maidens, and we shall catch them in a flowery net!"

Kasi Mollah did not clasp the hand of the enthusiastic Greek; and, without turning towards him, replied, coldly, "I do not grudge you the drink which I put before you, worthy merchant, but I perceive that it has begun to mount into your head, or else you would not talk such rubbish as selling free people to your enemies from motives of freedom. Nor do you say well in saying that we are under the yoke, for that is not true. Nobody has ever made the Circassian do homage, nor would any try to conquer us for the sake of the eyes of our poor damsels. Say no more about my children. I will not give them up. If any one comes to visit me, I'll send him about his business; if any one tries to deceive me, I'll cudgel him; and if any one tries to rob me, I'll slay him. And tell that to the merchants of Erzeroum also. And now say no more about it."

At these words the face of the merchant grew very long indeed. In his spite he began pulling at the stem of his chibook with such force that his face was furrowed right down the middle, and his eyebrows ascended to the middle of his forehead. From time to time he kept on wagging his head, and his scarlet, mortar-shaped fez along with it, and burned the tips of his fingers by absently poking the red-hot bowl of his pipe. But his indignation did not go beyond a shaking of the head, and there he wisely let the matter rest.

"Very well, Kasi Mollah. You are an honest fellow. We shall see—we shall see."

The sun was now setting, and from among the hills the bells of the home-returning cattle resounded across the level plain which extended in front of the rocky heights of Himri. Fifteen head of snow-white kine strolled leisurely towards the house of Kasi Mollah, passing one by one through the gate of their enclosure; behind the last of them came the children of the sheik, who guarded the herd in the forest.

The boy appeared to be about twelve, and the girl a year younger, and so closely did they resemble each other that, viewed in profile, it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. Both had the same long, black hair, which flowed in wondrous ringlets down their shoulders, the same soft complexion of a naïve maturity, and as smooth as velvet, just as if they never walked in the sunlight, and yet they had no head-coverings. The youth's face revealed so much girlish tenderness, and the girl's so much vigor and expression, that by changing their clothes it would have been possible to substitute one for the other; and, but for the well-known, tight-fitting corset, peculiar to the Circassian maidens, which caused her figure, slender as a delicate flower-stalk, to bend somewhat backwards, throwing into relief the contours of her childlike breasts, it would have been scarcely possible to have distinguished her from her brother, especially when, as now, they walked side by side, half embracing. The snow-white arm of the girl was round her brother's neck, and her humidly glittering black eyes seemed to be sucking the virile courage from his face; the boy held the slim figure of his sister encircled by one of his arms, tapping her, from time to time, caressingly on the shoulder, while his eyes rested, full of tenderness, on her beloved face.

"What a majestic pair of children!" exclaimed Leonidas Argyrocantharides, in his enthusiasm. "What a shame it is to lock them up in this corner of the world! But what the deuce is the lad dragging along with his left hand while he embraces his sister with his right? What is it, my pretty children? Nay, don't bring it here. What sort of unclean animal is it?"

The lad, with a triumphant smile, stood before the merchant while his sister ran to her father, climbed on to his knees, and throwing her arms shamefacedly round his neck hid her face from the stranger.

"Do you not recognize the bear-skin?" cried the youth, in a strong, clear voice; and as he spoke you became aware of the light black down which shaded his upper lip and revealed the man, and with one of his hands he raised up the beast he was dragging after him on to its hind legs. It was a young bear, about a year and a half old, whose head was battered and smashed in a good many places, thus showing what a severe struggle it had cost to bring it down.

"Where did you find that monster? Who gave it to you?" cried Leonidas, holding his hand before him as if he believed that the hideous monster, even when dead, could clutch hold of his thin drumsticks of legs.

"Where did I find it? Who gave it me?" cried the youth, proudly, and with that he pointed to his sister, and, as if ashamed to speak of his heroic deed himself, he said, "Tell him, Milieva!"

The old Circassian looked attentively at the two children. Neither of them perceived that their father was angry.

"We were in the forest," began the girl—her voice was like a silvery bell. "Thomar was carving a fife, and I was twining a garland for his head, because he pipes so prettily, when all at once a little kid with its mother came running towards us, and the little kid hid itself close to me—it trembled so, poor little thing! but its mother only bleated and kept running round and round, just as if it wanted to speak. Thomar looked all about, and not far from us perceived two young bears running off, and one of them had another little white kid on its back, which was certainly the young one of the little she-goat that was trying to talk to us. 'Thomar,' said I, 'if I were a boy, I would go after that young bear and take away the poor little kid from it.' 'And dost thou think I will not do it?' replied Thomar, and with that he caught up his club and went after the two young bears. One of them perceived him and quickly ran up a tree, but the other would not give up his prey, but turned to face Thomar. Ah! you should have seen how Thomar banged the wild beast on the head with his club till the blood ran down its shoulders, and suddenly it let go the white kid, which ran bleating after its mother."

The child clapped her little hands for joy, while her father softly stroked her long hair.

"But now the young bear, gnashing its teeth, rushed upon Thomar and seized the club in Thomar's hands with its teeth and claws. 'Thomar, don't let him have it!' cried I. But, indeed, he had no fear of the wild beast, for he drew his knife from his girdle and thrust it with all his might into the head of the furiously charging wild beast."

"Oho!" interrupted Thomar, "don't forget that you also rushed upon it, and gave me time to draw out my knife by seizing the ears of the bear in both hands and dragging it off me."

The father looked at the two children with an ever-darkening face, but the merchant solemnly shook his head and raised his hands aloft with an expression of horror. "O foolish—O mad children!" cried he.

"The bear had now had enough," continued Milieva, trying to give her talkative little mouth an earnest expression befitting her serious narration; "it tore itself out of our hands, and with a great roar took refuge from us in a subterranean cave, taking along with it Thomar's knife, buried in its head. Now this knife we had got from Hassan Beg, so we could not afford to lose it. So what do you think Thomar did? He dived into the narrow hole after the bear, and, seizing it there by the throat, throttled it, and dragged it out."

Cold drops of perspiration trickled down the foreheads of the two men.

"Then he caught the young bear by the foot, and as it was heavy we both dragged it along together. We had to make haste, for the old bear had scented our trail and was after us, and pursued us as far as the herds, where the herd-keepers shot it down, but its young one we brought along with us."

"O ye senseless children!" cried the merchant in his terror. "O blockheads! Suppose the bear had clawed your faces, you would have been disfigured forevermore. It would really serve you right if your father gave you a good thrashing with this new whip."

And that is what really did happen.

In his wrath Kasi Mollah seized the freshly made, mule-driving whip, and cannot one imagine the fury, begotten of fear, which would take possession of a father's heart on hearing such a hair-bristling narrative from the lips of his children? To poke their noses into a bear's den, forsooth! The old bear would have torn the pair of them to pieces had she been able to catch them! They had certainly well deserved a thrashing, and a good thrashing too! Thomar would not have wept or groaned however many stripes he might have got; he only clinched his teeth, and, standing upright, bore with tearless eyes the lashing of the whip on his back and shoulders without a cry, without a sob.

But Milieva cast herself, shrieking, on her father's breast, and the tears began to pour abundantly from her radiantly bright eyes. She caught hold of the Circassian's chastising right arm with both her hands, and begged so sweetly, "Do not hurt Thomar; do not hurt him, father! It was indeed not his fault. I assure you I set him on. I told him to go after them. Thomar only went because I asked him."

Kasi Mollah tried to push the child aside, whereupon she flung her arms round Thomar's neck and protected her brother's body, exclaiming, her face all aglow, "'Tis my fault, beat me, but don't hurt Thomar!"

The lad would have disengaged her arms, and, clinching his teeth for pain, said:

"'Tis not true! Milieva did not urge me to do it. Milieva was looking on from a distance. Milieva was not there. Don't hit Milieva."

But the girl threw her arms so tightly round her father that he was not able to tear himself loose. At last, in sheer desperation, he was obliged to lift the paternal instrument of admonition against the girl also. But now the youth snatched at the whip, and exclaimed, with sparkling eyes:

"Strike her not, for she has done no wrong! Beat me as much as you like, but do not strike Milieva. If you do I will leave your house, and you shall never see me more!"

"What, you ragged cub, you!" cried the old Circassian, infuriated by the opposition of his son, and forcibly tearing away the whip from his hand, he struck the girl a violent blow across the shoulders with it.

Milieva ceased to weep, she only pressed her lips together, as her brother had already taught her to do, and cast down her eyes; but Thomar perceived a tremor run through her tender, maidenly bosom at the torture.

The old Circassian himself felt sorry for the poor thing, though he was too proud to show it; but it was plain he had put his wrath behind him from the fact that he now began to wind the whip round its handle.

Thomar bent over the girl's shoulder, and wherever he saw one of the painful bruises which she had got on his account he kissed it softly, and after that he kissed the girl's face, and those kisses were parting kisses.

He said not a word to anybody in the house, but taking up his shepherd's staff and his rustic flute, he went forth from his father's dwelling without once looking behind him.

"Father," cried the girl, sobbing, "Thomar is going away forever!"

The old Circassian made no reply. His son did not look back at him, and he did not cast a glance after his son, and yet they were both heart-broken on each other's account.

"He'll soon be back," thought the father to himself. "Hunger and want will bring him back."

It was late evening, and still the youth had not returned. The sun had set long ago. A violent storm with thunder and lightning arose. The wind roared among the trees of the distant woods, and the wolves howled in the mountains.

"Father, let me go and bring back Thomar," pleaded the girl, gazing sorrowfully into the dark night through the window.

"He will come back of his own accord," replied the Circassian, and he would not let the girl go.

"Listen, how the rain pours, and how the wild beasts are howling! Thomar is all alone there in the tempest, and it is so dark."

"'Tis a good night for a son who forsakes his father," replied the sheik. But within himself he thought, "Some neighbor is sure to take the lad in and give him shelter."

At midnight the tempest abated, and the moon shone forth brightly. From the distant woods came floating back to the village the notes of a rustic flute. Neither father nor daughter had had any sleep.

"Listen, father!" said Milieva. "Thomar is piping in the wood; let me go and bring him back!"

"That is not a flute, but a nightingale," replied the stony-hearted Circassian. "Lie down and sleep!"

Yet he himself could not sleep.

In the morning both the tempest and the song had ceased. The old Circassian pretended to be asleep. Milieva softly raised her head and looked at her father, and seeing that his eyes were closed, stealthily put on her clothes and went out of the house on tiptoe. Her father did not tell her not to go. He had already forgiven his son, and resolved never to be angry with him any more. After all, it had only been an ebullition of fatherly affection that had made him punish his son for jeopardizing his life so blindly.

Shortly afterwards the jingling of the asses' bells told him that the Greek, who slept on the floor outside, was getting ready to depart. The merchant seemed to be in great haste. He piled his boxes on the backs of his beasts higgledy-piggledy, even overlooking a parcel or two here and there, and all the time he kept talking to himself, stopping short suddenly when he caught sight of the Circassian.

"I was just going to take leave of you, Chorbadzhi. Why do you get up so early? Go to sleep! What a nice day it is after the storm! Salám aláküm! Peace be with you! Greet my kinsmen, your sweet children. No, I will speak no more of your children. I will do as you desire, I promise you, and what I have once promised— So our business is at an end? You are a worthy man, Kasi Mollah! . . . You are a good father—a very good father. I only wish every man was like you. The only thing that grieves me is that you cannot join our holy covenant. The Hellene and the Circassian groan together beneath the yoke of a common tyrant. And then you don't reflect who are on our side. Our northern neighbor is always ready to liberate us. I say no more. To a wise man a hint is a revelation. But do you not long for glory? You have no glorious ancestors. With you there are no memories of a Marathon, a Platäa. . . . God bless you, Kasi Mollah! Go on shooting lots of antelopes, and I'll come back and buy the hides from you; mind you let me have them cheap! Take this kiss for yourself, this for your son, and this third one for your daughter. Then you won't give them to me, eh? Well, God bless you, Kasi Mollah!"