Faces began to peer from black alleys between the houses, a glimmer of cautious lanthorns pierced the darkness. Two parties were approaching, with noiseless feet on the snow. One came up from the street, where Dame Kate, crying and wringing her hands, had drawn together both townspeople and those of the castle who heard her complaints. Among these was Antonio, who hurried down, eager yet prudent, ready to take command yet very conscious that this crazy lord might not be good to approach. However, it was quite certain that he could not be allowed to carry off Mistress Margaret Roden as though she were a peasantlass who had taken his fancy.

Who Iwould dare tell Sir William? And even now he was waiting to see his granddaughter on her return from the midnight mass.

The little group was joined by those two worthy men, Simon and Timothy Toste, whose house was not far from the town-gate of the castle. Then Alice Tilney hurried up, flushed and frightened, having somehow missed the servants, and hoping to overtake Margaret before she went with Christmas greetings to her grandfather. Alice screamed, wringing her hands as wildly as the nurse herself, and was going to rush alone in pursuit of her lady, but a word from Antonio brought her back.

"Patience, Mistress Alice, you will make a scandal," he said.

"What! and leave Mistress Meg in the hands of a madman?" Alice cried. "Scandal! 'Tis made already. He went that way, Nurse? Why, he may have carried her away into the forest. He's raving mad, and you know it, Antonio; Sir William knows it too. To see him burn those letters! On my life, you are a coward, if you will not follow me and rescue her!"

Antonio shrugged his shoulders. "My Lord is a fine swordsman," he said; and little Simon Toste, his smiling face quite pale and drawn, stepped forward with Timothy at his elbow.

"Therefore unarmed men are the fittest to deal with him," he said with dignity. "Stand back, young people. My brother and I will follow Mistress Margaret down the lane. Come,

Timothy, you have your lanthorn. Notice, friends, the effect of Sir William's obstinacy. He would not listen to our worthy Vicar, who warned him to avoid these same Marlowes like the pestilence. Ay, Nurse, come along with us, and you too, Mistress Tilney, if you will. You are better out of the way, Master Antony. Moral measures are best, and you might whip out a weapon, with all the respect you have for his Lordship's sword."

Antonio showed his teeth; but the little apothecary's malice was not worth resenting. "Moral fiddle"If my Lord

sticks!" he muttered. will give her up to you pompous pair of asses, he is idiot as well as madman." Then he gave the low whistle that always brought Alice Tilney to his side. "Let them go," he whispered. "We'll do better"; and he kept her standing still a moment, while the two worthies and Dame Kate, with a few gaping hangers-on from street and castle gateway, hurried away along the lane.

Alice came very close to the Italian. He took her two hands and squeezed them hard, till she winced with the pain. His face looked very white and his eyes shone in the darkness. "Where is Jasper ?" he said.

"Not far off. I left him this moment, swearing swearing to stop the marriage, by fair means or foul." "Any with him?"

"Four or five."

"Go back to him,

Tell him to take the other street, and fall upon them from behind. He will understand; a madman ought not to be at large."

"Tonio,-I fear-he might kill my Lord, and carry her away!" The words were breathed in Antonio's ear, as if the girl was afraid to speak them.

"Ah! He will not touch him till we have her safe, or else my dagger shall find his heart, Alice. I shall be there."

"He will not take orders from you. Tonio, how angry he would be! But you are cold and cruel sometimes. I could even fancy

Get you gone with your fancies! Is this a time for kissing, little fool? There, if you will have it,-now be gone!"

"But you are so cold," Alice murmured, as she ran laughing away.

Antonio waited a moment, listening, then stole with light feet down the lane.

Harry Marlowe and his young love had lost count of time and consciousness of place; there, standing together in the snow, they vowed between kisses never again to be parted. Perhaps for any sober, ordinary English lass of gentle birth, hedged in, as such usually were, by all kinds of stiff restrictions, the passion of so wild and romantic a lover would have meant as much fear as joy. But Margaret was a child of the South: the sun of Venice had warmed the blood of her ancestors; and the girl who owed her stately young dignity to English training had a nature of Italian fire underneath, which the foreign life and habits of her English father had done little or nothing to nullify. Thus the world of new feeling into which Harry Marlowe brought his suddenly

No. 535.-VOL. XC.

chosen bride was to her even more beautiful than amazing. Her passion. was ready to rise to the height of his own; she was his, without an afterthought; even conscience had ceased to trouble her now. They knew and agreed that the golden moment, when. she leaned radiant from the castle window to watch him riding wearily across the bridge, was the supreme moment that decided all their future lives.

And yet Margaret Roden was no fool. She knew, and told herself. plainly, that in some indescribable way this Harry of hers was different from other men. And she had not forgotten old Kate's words,-"a fine man, but they say he's crazy." If there was anything in the absurd accusation, she could only add: "Then give me a crazy lover, for I might not feel this trust and safety with any reasonable man. And if he's crazy, why, he wants my love the more, for he must be unhappy, and I'll comfort him. In his senses or out of them, I am yours and you are mine, Harry!"

They had now agreed that Sir William must be persuaded to consent to an immediate marriage,-it would not be very hard, Meg thought, knowing her grandfather—and then, she was very sure that Harry should not leave her behind, for she was not afraid of a long journey on horseback, and she would ride with him to join the Queen.

Harry laughed to himself. "Angry Trust a child for guessing right!" he muttered, and then he pretended to be stern, and told Meg that his wife must obey him.

"In everything, except in living without you," she said. "But forsooth, if you mean to leave me behind, I will not marry you."

"Forsooth, will you not, fair lady?" and the argument had to end in kisses. Suddenly Meg tried to escape from the arms that held her, but they only tightened their grasp, till the stealing

peered through the dimness, and the low chatter of well-known voices reminded her of the world she had forgotten.

し

A MINGLING of East and West, of Oriental phlegm and European progress, the Land of the Morning Calm or the Realm of Dawning Civilisation? Which shall more fittingly describe Corea? Omniscient European journalists entitle it the Hermit Kingdom, where electric cars flash through the streets of Seoul and an excellent railway brings the traveller in comfort from the seaport of Chemulpo to the capital. The day of isolation, of sluggish apathy in the face of modern progress, is past for Corea. Already Japanese engineers-mark the nationality-are busy on a railway projected from Seoul right across the kingdom to Fusan, a tiny seaport nestling beside a splendid natural harbour on the south-east coast. The electric light, already installed in the palace, is finding its way into the streets of the capital; and through a city as quaint and old-world as Pekin itself electric tram-cars run everywhere.

These changes are certainly of very recent date and owe their origin to the King's love of novelty rather than to any far-sighted policy. A late Minister to Washington, on his return to Corea, informed his monarch of the marvels he had seen in the strange land of America. Lights that burned not; carriages that ran without the aid of horses; magic wires which enabled friends, far separated, to hear the sound of each other's familiar voices,-all this appealed to the wonder-loving ruler of the Hermit Kingdom. He made this ex-Minister Governor of Seoul and bade him arrange with his foreign

friends to bring these marvels within the monarch's ken. An American company built the railway to the capital. An American engineer installed the electric light in the royal palace,-and strange are the tales he can tell of what he saw there! In other respects the country still remains sunk in semi-barbarism. Tyrannical officials still cruelly oppress the lower classes: manufactures and trade still remain altogether in the hands of the foreigner; but the thin edge of the wedge has been introduced. Corea will not go back; Japan will see to that.

I was on my way to Japan from North China. An opportunity offered of making a voyage in a steamer of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (the excellent Japanese Mailship Company) from Taku to Newchwang in Manchuria, thence to Chifu in North China, then back across the Gulf of Pe-chi-li to Corea and along its coast, touching at Chemulpo and Fusan. Such a chance was not to be lost. Japan is in these days as common as Egypt. The fabled city of Pekin was as well known to the officers of the Allied Armies as London, Paris, or Berlin. Corea alone remained, comparatively, a terra incognita. At Tientsin, barely two days' steam from it, no one seemed aware that such a thing as a railway existed in the Hermit Kingdom. At the British Consul-General's office there, when seeking to learn if it were possible to march overland through Corea from Chemulpo on the west to Gensan, or Wensan, on the east coast, I was informed that they knew little

or

nothing about that country. This promised well; even in these days of widespread civilisation, I was at last to catch a glimpse of a still barbarous and unprogressive land. The sole thing that troubled me about it was that our steamer was to stop only two days at Chemulpo; and I wanted to visit Seoul, which is forty miles inland. How in forty-eight hours was I to manage to go to the capital and return? I knew nothing of the existence of a railway; and I came to the conclusion that I must secure ponies at Chemulpo and ride.

But, to my surprise, on going on board the comfortable little Japanese steamer, GENKAI MARU, at Taku, I found in the saloon a time-table of the Seoul-Chemulpo railway, which showed that trains ran to the capital every two hours during the day, taking about an hour and a quarter over the journey. It was a relief to learn that a railway existed; but of course, I thought, it could only be a dilapidated, ramshackle concern, and one would be jolted in wretched carriages over a badly-laid line. Still that would be better than riding eighty miles on rough Corean ponies. To add to my astonishment there were advertisements, also hung up in the saloon, of two hotels in Seoul. One, kept by an Englishman, was called the Station Hotel and claimed among its attractions the advantage of being "far from the blare of military display." The rival establishment was evidently French and bore the name Hôtel du Palais. Railways and hotels! Corea did not seem quite so benighted as I had thought.

Newchwang and Chifu visited, our steamer headed for Chemulpo. The entrance to the harbour lies through a bewildering maze of countless islets, far more wonderful and picturesque than the much lauded archipelago of

the Inland Sea of Japan. In between these innumerable islands large and small, our vessel threaded her way, and my respect for her officers (all Japanese) rose high when I saw how skilfully they brought her through the tortuous channel on a dark night with never a beacon light to guide them. The large steamers of the Japaneseowned lines which ply to Europe, America, and Australia have to be provided with white white commanders, officers, and chief engineers, as European passengers fear to trust their lives to a purely native ship's company. Yet the navigation of the Chinese, Corean, Siberian, and Japanese coasts, in these narrow typhoonscourged seas, calls for far more skill than is required to take a ship along the broad, well-defined ocean routes; and all the steamers which ply from Taku and Vladivostok to Nagasaki and Yokohama are commanded by Japanese officers.

Soon after daybreak I was on deck to catch the first glimpse of Chemulpo. In and out through the narrow passages our vessel swung. Here, on one hand, lay a long, hilly island, its steep slopes clad with grass, the white beach fringed with foam. On the other a cluster of gigantic rocks rose sheer and threatening from the sea, their black sides glistening with the spray flung up by the waves which rolled heavily against them, only to be hurled back in masses of broken water. Suddenly the GENKAI MARU doubled a bluff, rocky shoulder, and ahead of us lay the mainland.

On the face of a long, undulating hill stood the city, the houses climbing up the steep side to the summit. No mere cluster of Eastern hovels is Chemulpo. Near the sea tall factory chimneys rose up above Europeanlike buildings. Long, regular streets of well-built houses ascended the hill. Here and there in spacious grounds