He appeared to me to speak too strongly, and too much from a primitive point of view; and all who set up such a standard as that are impatient, and apt to exaggerate. But it was not for a country Lubin to vindicate the ladies, and I was in haste to deal with nearer considerations.

"Perhaps you will be angry with me," I said, "but you have told me so much of yourself, that you will not regard it as a liberty. Are you sure, sir, that you do not imperil your life by returning to people so revengeful?"

"As certain as a man can be who knows their obstinacy, and the power of long tradition. And who would wish to harm me now? My sister made much for a time of her wrongs about the marriage portion; but her wicked husband's public vaunt that he had slain our father, and my surrender of all her share as soon as she was a widow, must have taken the sting from that. And as for Rakhan, and his death, could she prefer a faithless husband to her own twin brother?"

But

"Well, you know best, sir. is there not a son of that same Prince Rakhan, 'Hafer' you called him the other day, who may feel himself bound by that fiendish law, even if his mother rejects it?"

"Yes, and I hope to introduce him to you. A young man of what you call a rough and ready nature, the natural produce of a rugged land. Too free-spoken perhaps, and apt to give offence to those who dislike strong convictions. But I hear that among his own people he is beloved, and admired beyond all example, for his justice, mildness, and unbounded generosity. The Ossets are not what you have in this country, advanced and experienced Christians. On the contrary, it is a painful fact that the larger half are idolaters; and of

them, and of the Christians too, not one in ten is far off from a thief. This makes them thoroughly worthy of the deepest British interest. In going round the globe so much, you never care about any race that is beginning to get better. Your own, for instance, is nothing to you. You can hope for the best about them; and believe that the Lord, who governs the earth for the benefit of the British race, will make it all right for the worst of you. Upon that point you have no misgivings, any more than you have about any others, when you feel yourselves summoned to improve the world. But my duty is upon a very small scale, and is limited to my own people."

Great as my reverence was for Sûr Imar, it was difficult not to suspect that some adverse influence had been at work with him. Hitherto he had always expressed a genial admiration of our race, which had produced on my part a corresponding respect for his uncommon powers of insight, and freedom from foreign prejudice. "You have taken a turn against us," I replied with some warmth, and looking at him, as I had never looked before; "time will show who is right, Sûr Imar."

"My young friend," he answered, "you are quite mistaken. I am not leaving you through my own wish. Such quiet days I shall never know again, and such kind respect for my privacy, even with ten feet of snow round my walls. For the sake of my countrymen I must go.

That I cannot do much is quite certain; but I hope to start them on a better course. For years, as you know, I have been preparing, and my first chance of trying it is come at last. Am I likely to speak ungratefully of the only land on the face of the earth that would receive me, without a

thousand mortifications and annoyances? Why, even your tax-collectors have been civil."

This was a climax of approbation which amazed, and by power of contrast puzzled the warmest assertor of national virtue. "Surely you cannot mean that!" I exclaimed. But romantic as he was, he nodded. "Now, as you charge me with distrust of England, and I may have said some ungracious things," he spoke with a smile almost as bright as Dariel's, "show your forgiveness, my dear friend, by coming with me into my daughter's room. We are beginning to put up our little possessions, for the journey to a rougher place. How many thousand times shall we regret the halcyon days in this quiet little vale! But come and have a cup of coffee." "I am not fit to go into a lady's room. I have got about a pint of water in either boot. They are warranted waterproof, and so they won't let it get out again."

"We'll soon put that to rights. You should wear arabas. Come into this passage, and Stepan will see to it, and bring you a pair of my sandals. I will be with you again in a minute."

While the faithful henchman was pulling off my boots, which was no small tug for even his great arms, his mind was evidently in a condition of still more strenuous exertion. She-if the higher portion of our composition lays claim to the higher half of gender-was struggling and rolling and flopping about (being over-bulky for lighter process) in quest of some fugitive English word, earnestly courted, but wickedly coy.

"Milord, put on more smoke, more smoke. Yes, yes, more smoke, else be too late. Me good friend to milord now. Wicked mens come every day. But milord smoke, smoke, smoke."

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXIX.

He puffed with his lips and panted, as if to impress me with the need for a vast fumigation. "I want a pipe sadly, my friend," I replied; "but how can I have it in a lady's room?"

The Lesghian stared at me, and stroked his beard, and shook his head angrily, as if he had found it empty. "Stepan fool. No say, no say," he exclaimed as he made off to fetch the slippers; but I am afraid that I heard him mutter, as he turned the corner, "Inglese, dam languidge; dam languidge, Inglese!" In a minute, however, he returned, with a broad smile lighting up all his battered countenance, as if he had found what he wanted in the sandals.

"Me know now. Stepan big fool. Milord put on shteam, shteam, shteam! Go ahead! Who's afeard? Won't go home till mornin'? The gal I left behind me. Nancy is my darlin'! Milord know now."

"I am blest if I do," I endeavoured to reply; but he would have no more quenching. In the triumph. of philology his dignity was lost; and I saw that he must have spent at least a day in London. "Is the Caucasus come to this?" I asked, and was glad to see my host return.

Stepan stood up, and shut his mouth in the curtain of his beard, like a casement closed under the ivy, and looked at me, as if there had never been less than a mile of moral distance between us. In the name of the Lord, where does sham end? But I had to do a little on my own account.

Dariel's room! I had never been in the shrine of my divinity till now; and when I was there I could look at nothing except her entrancing presence. She was resting upon something-it might have been a cloud, for all that I could tell about it. The soft light fell upon the sweetest face that heaven itself ever 3 A

shone upon; and I tried to speak, but no words came; neither could I look upon her as I longed to do. If she had been too much for me out of doors, what possibility was left me here?

"My child," said her father; for she too was silent-which emboldened me to steal an ecstatic dream of the petals of a blush-rose fluttering on her face-"my child, I have brought our kind friend Mr Cranleigh, who has placed us under so many obligations, to say Good-bye, or at least Good-night-for I hope that we may see him again, before we leave. We have taken you a little by surprise, I fear."

"But it is a pleasant surprise, dear father. I was a little-what is the proper English word? Melancholy? No, I can never be that with you. But sorry perhaps, out of spirits, is it so? We have been so happy in this very tranquil rest. "It is true," replied Sûr Imar, as he turned to me; "perhaps we shall never have so smooth a time again. It is like the beginning of a new life to us. But Dariel knows that we must not think of our own comfort only."

"No, but of our lives-of your life, father. What does it matter to me where I go? But we are travelling from a land where you are safe, to a country of savages where there is no law, but everybody burning to kill everybody else."

"A pretty description of your native land! It is the air of this country, Mr Cranleigh. My daughter has breathed it so long that she believes that there is no other excellence under the sun. We know that it has some such effect upon the natives. But why should it be so with a little foreign girl? Dariel, my dear, I feel ashamed of you."

"Oh, how much better does he know than that!" the loving daughter exclaimed, as she placed

both hands upon his shoulders and her face among his beard, whose dark cascade spared a silver rill or two to glisten through the sable of the young abundance; and thence she looked at me with a snug composure, as if to ask, "What do you want with passion? This is affection if you please. This is all that a sweet girl needs." And then she very calmly stroked his moustache up, and put her lips to his, and kept them there, till I could almost hope that he might prove to have taken a taste of garlic. But perhaps if he had, it would have been all the same to her.

66 we

"You see what our manners are," said the father with a laugh; have not quite attained the proper self-command, I fear." And then I had my revenge, for Dariel blushed as if she had done an outrageous thing, and whispered, "Oh, I beg your pardon!"

It was a lucky thing for her perhaps, although a sad one for poor me, that her father was so close at hand, else how could I have controlled myself? For, being a little repressed, she turned the ardent appeal of her eyes on me, quite as if-quite as if I had been a member of the family. And when I smiled, not reassurance only, but most loyal encouragement, what did she do but glide away from papa and sit down by the visitor!

"Oh Grace, you are graceful enough," thought I, "for yourself, and for any stockbroker. But if you want to know how to sit down, you must come and see Dariel do it." For she had told Jackson, and he in his lunacy thought it too good to be kept to himself, that her brother George, if he got the wife he wanted, would be obliged to put her through a course of chair-drill, before he could give a dinner-party!

How I trembled to find myself sitting at her side, indoors, unhurried, with the sanction of authority, civilised, waiting for a cup of coffee, watching the turn of her exquisite hands, nettled by the dancing of the clustered hair, which drew a veil, always at the most provoking moment, over the lustrous speech of those myriadflashing and yet ever gentle eyes, as the filigree of some crafty jeweller tempers and deepens the delight within! What was there for me? Could a common sort of fellow, with nothing but rough truth and deep worship to commend him, dare to suppose that he could ever get in there, and be cherished as the owner of the heart that moved the whole?

I assure you that I made a great fool of myself; though such an assurance is superfluous to any man who has ever earned his salt. I had just enough sense left to say "Yes" or "No," with a "Please in a deep breath now and then, and a "Thank you" that took away breath altogether. Dariel, who was as fit as a fiddle-how those low expressions spoil one's most exalted moments-saw with her ill-timed serenity the confounded tumult of my system; and, as she told me in the wiser days, felt ashamed of herself for enjoying it. Ah me! it is not often, in the little square- round of human life, that we get tossed over the boundaries thus, with the profundity of misery struggling with the sublimity of ecstasy.

"My dear young friend," said the tranquil Lesghian, who had let his eyes follow the lines of his beard in amiable serenity, though there must have been a stealthy smile under it, "few things are more gratifying than to have one's own productions valued by those who understand the subject, and

"Admire is too weak a word, Sûr Imar" - my eyes were still upon the charming result of his system of education—"worship, love, adore, enshrine

"We will put it on the labels of our tins, as soon as we have a London agency. But only your initials, as your friends might not approve. I am always at a loss for those strong expressive words of your language, which now survive only in advertisements. My dear, put them down in your tablets. I defy any soap to surpass them. G. C. worships, loves, adores, and enshrines the coffee of the Caucasus. I am not enthusiastic, Mr Cranleigh; but next to education, and the spread of Christianity, I trust to the civilising effects of commerce, which your nation insists upon, perhaps even more strenuously than the other two great agents. The Russians have introduced the growth of tea, and I heartily hope that it may answer. But knowing the genius of our people, which certainly is not inclined to perpetual toil, I have come to the conclusion that coffee, which requires less constant attention, would have a better chance upon our Southern slopes, where the summer is long and the heat intense. wish I could have seen your brother Harold, that universal genius, about it. The preparation which has so impressed you is not from our native berries yet, only from the slopes near Tiflis. But I hope we shall have our own in a few years' time. And then my discovery comes in."

I

For all that I knew to the contrary, I might have been drinking bilge-water flavoured with tar and

stirred with marlin-spikes. But I grasped his hand with emotion, and said, "No words are adequate, Sûr Imar."

He must have known as well as I did or what would be the good of his having ever loved his Oria? -that confusion was far too weak a word, and fusion itself not strong enough to describe the condition of my brain. Till Dariel, with one precious glance of reserve and soft sympathy as if her father really must not claim to be the only one having any knowledge of mebowed for me to move a little; and oh, she quite hung over me! For, being so stupid, I had not moved; and stupidity gets the prize more often than the cleverest volatility. "Darling!" I whispered through her hair; for her father was gone to his coffee-grinder, to secure some more of my adoration. And Dariel only whispered "Hush," with a quiver, but no repugnance.

"Father," she said with pure presence of mind, as he looked round from his grinding, "my senestra is a little out of tune; but Mr Cranleigh will allow for that. He is kind enough to wish to hear me sing; and he thinks that my voice is rather agreeable."

"He is right enough in his judgment there. But what opportunity has he ever had of hearing it?" This question made me tremble when I thought of my first offence; but the nymph answered very bashfully

"You remember the day, dear father, when you invited Mr Cranleigh to attend our little service. We all sang in our quiet way; and he was kind enough to be pleased with it."

"How could he be pleased They do their best; and I am always proud to hear them. But, my dear friend, it is a frightful noise that drowns my child's soft melody.

Englishmen who have travelled among our mountains, tell their countrymen that all our voices are harsh and cackling, guttural and disagreeable. Some may be so, but not all, and in my opinion few of them. I am not a judge of music, but I think my child sings beautifully."

"Oh, father, you have spoiled it all. Mr Cranleigh will expect wonders. And all I can do is so simple; only it sounds nice to me, because-because I feel that I mean it."

"Then your voice must be of your own tongue. She can sing in English very sweetly; but never with the expression which her native language brings to her. Mr Cranleigh says he would like best to hear you in your own language, dear; though he won't understand a word of it. That ancient lay of Inkulluk, I like it as well as any. The words are nothing; but the melody has a tinkle like a mountain - stream, which modern music seldom has. We call it the song of the stork, although there is very little about them in it. If you like it, you shall have a prose translation, and perhaps your brother will put it into verse, for you tell me he has even that accomplishment. Now try that simple little song, my dear."

The lovely maiden, thus exhorted, smiled as she cast back her hair, and upon the white rise of her breast laid a musical affair of some dark wood, having divers strings and curves. Lute, zither, mandolin, tambourin, lyre, it was none of those, and I knew not, neither cared what it was, only to watch her swift white fingers dancing like snowdrops inspired by the wind, and her lips like rosebuds tremulous. The words were nothing but sounds to me; yet I knew,