she, and to spare, and that pride made her | Okedon is my very good friend," she said forget the mist which had clouded his in a frozen voice. I don't think I have handsome eyes the last time she had seen said or implied that he is anything more." them, the sob in his throat as he uttered In his relief Sir Piers set her free and that last word-darling! She only re- stepped back to the window that he himmembered that he had gone without a self might breathe more freely. After a word except one that meant nothing; moment or so he returned to her side that she had all but asked him to speak, again. "Violet," he said hoarsely, "do and that he had let the opportunity pass you know you almost killed me of fright?" by without attempting to take advantage "II" gasped Violet, stepping of it. back that she might get out of his way, "I don't know what He caught her hand. "Don't you know what I have been waiting, hoping, watching for all these months?" he asked, his eyes and brow lowering and his square and heavy jaw setting itself into squarer and more determined lines than ever. And the other one was so different. From first to last he had gone steadily on, trying to win her, unwilling though she was, and had, over and over again, proved herself to be, in spite of her coquetry and her encouragement. He was so faithful, and his meaning was so plain and Willie Okedon had gone away, perhaps forever," Don't you know that II could have without a word. And then when Willie Okedon's letter and fan reached her, all the old feelings sprang up again; the remembrance of his brave and bonny eyes; the caressing softness of his pleasant voice; the very fact that he had remembered her at all. each and all served to send her heart back to the glorious days of the last season, with a great gush of love such as made Piers Trevor's chance a very poor one. He happened to be staying at the Chase, as the Daverels' country house was called, when Willie Okedon's letter and parcel reached Violet; happened, indeed, to be in the room at the very moment they were handed to her, and saw the rapid changes upon her beautiful face as she read. "You have news?" he asked, wondering what it all meant. "Yes;" looking up at him with radiant eyes. "Mr. Okedon has sent me a wonderful fan he has had given him in Egypt by an old negress." And she began quickly to denude it of the wrappings which protected it. "Oh, isn't it quaint! - isn't it " and there she broke off short, for Sir Piers had taken her boldly into his arms, and was holding her to him, fan and all. "Don't say Okedon and his fan are anything to you," he cried in a shaking voice; "don't look like that don't, Violet, for God's sake!" His words recalled the girl with a shock to a remembrance of the fact, which for a moment she had forgotten, that, in truth, Willie Okedon was nothing to her! "Mr. killed you as you stood there smiling over that other fellow's letter, because I was afraid he was going to step in between us and rob me of you?" Not one word of love in all this storm of wooing, and yet Violet was giving way fast, and the radiance, which had come to her across land and sea, had all died out of her face. "I don't know what you mean," she stammered, finding he was waiting for her to speak. He caught roughly at the other hand, which still held the ivory fan against her heaving breast, and as he caught at it, her fingers half released it, and the fan flew open between them. For full a minute they stood thus, looking straight into one another's eyes; then Sir Piers slowly, and as if against his will, set her free and fell a step away from her. As for Violet, her attitude, from one of confusion and shrinking distress, altered to a calm and upright pose of dignity. "Sir Piers," she asked steadily, "do you love me? "Have I not sufficiently proved it?" he demanded. 66 Perhaps, and perhaps not. I asked you a question, and you answered it by another." He laughed out loud. "Love you? Yes!" he answered. But Violet shook her beautiful head. "No not as would be my right if I were to marry you. I have been close to the crisis of my life, Sir Piers; but some strange power tells me that you do not love me as you can love - or as you do." It seemed to the girl as if she spoke by inspiration, as if scales had fallen from her eyes, and she was able to look straight into this man's soul. "We will be friends," able Wilfred Okedon rested not until he got leave and went straightway off to London town to visit the girl he had left behind him. Now it is no exaggeration whatever to say that during the journey home Daddy Longlegs had gone over, with care and loving attention, every little trifling detail of this interview, until he might fairly have been described as "word-perfect." During his sojourn in the land of pyramids and scarabei, he had completely forgotten Miss Daverel the heiress, had thought very little about Violet Daverel the beauty, and a great deal about Violet the girl. In his own mind he had arranged that, though she would not be expecting him, she would be alone, that she would Nobody; only I saw in the paper this morning that she has had an accident." "An accident? When? Where?" Violet Daverel took up a paper from the table and pointed to a short paragraph. "Lady Viole: Standish, who was only married a few weeks ago, met with a serious accident on board Mr. Standish's yacht, the Clipper, yesterday afternoon at Ply-spring from her chair, and with a few mouth, by falling down the companion ladder. The unfortunate young lady had not recovered consciousness at a late hour last evening, and the worst fears are entertained in consequence." Sir Piers glanced over the paragraph like a man in a dream, and then the paper fell from his hand to the floor. But there he stood, just where the blow had fallen upon him, staring blindly out into the bright autumn sunshine, as unconscious for the moment of all around him, as the girl lying on board of the yacht Clipper in Plymouth Sound. Violet Daverel stole quietly out of the room. "That is love!" she said as she closed the door. CHAPTER IV. THE same evening Sir Piers Trevor left the Chase, and that night Lady Violet Standish the bride of a few weeks died! So that crisis in Violet Daverel's life passed over, and the intimacy between her and Sir Piers Trevor ended. The relief to her was great; and although there were certain wise people in society, who remarked that it was certainly odd, but men who were professedly admirers of Miss Daverel, the beauty, seemed to get very quickly tired of her, "So odd, you know, when she has so much money; it almost looks as if there was nothing behind that pretty face of hers," they did not say it to her, and so she did not suffer in any way. tears fall into his arms, and, like the prince and princess in the fairy tale, they would live happy ever after. It was all very pretty; but, unhappily, it did not fall out as he had planned at all. On the contrary; for when he reached the home where his divinity dwelt, he found other worshippers at the shrine. She jumped up in a great hurry when he was announced, it was true - but there all resemblance to his arrangements ceased. He had to endure a good deal of heroworship, which he felt he did not deserve, and hated accordingly; but he had not the smallest chance of a few quiet words with the fair young mistress of the house. At last, just when he was beginning to think he should have to go, Mr. Daverel came in, and, acting on a hint given in a whisper from his daughter, told him they were going to the Lyceum that evening, and asked him to come back to dinner and to go with them. Daddy needed no second bidding. He was out of the house and into a cab in two minutes, and spinning back to the Alexandra Hotel, which he had chosen because it was nearer Queen's Gate than the one he usually used. He was dressed in next to no time and on his way back again; but he was not early enough to find Violet in the drawing-room alone. However, to be with her at all was joy, and Daddy did not grumble, but ate an uncommonly good dinner and enjoyed it greatly. And then when Violet rose, telling her father and an old gentleman who was the only other guest that they had just five and twenty minutes before they need move, he asked her if he might come with her, and she said yes. Of course she said yes, and. Daddy might have known what that meant, and acted on it. But Daddy didn't! Instead, he behaved very much as he had done before, and let Miss Daverel, the heiress, come between him and Violet, the girl who loved him. From The Nineteenth Century. MOHAMMEDANISM IN AFRICA. IN the month of June last, I received a pressing and often repeated invitation from the Bishop of Lichfield, and the organizing secretaries of the Church Congress, to read a paper, during the October session of that body, on the subject of "Ten minutes gone!" she said impatiently, as she glanced at the jewelled hands of the little Dresden clock. "Oh! Mohammedanism in Africa. There was -why can't he speak?" But Daddy didn't. He stammered, and hammered, looking unutterable things, and standing nervously, first on one foot and then on the other, until Violet would have liked to scream, just by way of relieving her feelings. And then, when three more precious minutes had slipped away, a bright thought struck her, and she put out her hand and took the little ivory fan off the mantelshelf where it was lying. "Willie," she said, "I have kept your fan quite safe, you see!" And she spread it out and put it into his hand. much that was attractive to me in the proposal. It was a question which I had studied long and deeply. I was alive to its profound interest and importance. More than this, I had published, thirteen years previously, in my lectures on "Mohammed and Mohammedanism," certain views upon the subject, which had only dawned upon me gradually in the course of my inquiries, and were many of them, at that time, new, or almost new, to the Christian world. They were truths-if truths indeed they turn out to be - many of which had not then risen above the horizon. And though the book which contained them was, to my surprise as well as pleasure, welcomed by Orientalists everywhere, and received the honor of elaborate and appreciative notices from such high authorities as Dr. G. P. Badger, Professor Palmer, Professor Noldeke, Mr. Albert Réville and Mr. Blyden, yet, as I fully expected, it was received with a chorus of condemnation by, I think, the whole of the religious newspapers and periodicals in the country, with the solitary exception of the Guardian. The views I had put forward on Mohammedanism in Africa came in for a special portion of this vituperation, and I well remember that the leading missionary periodical of the day devoted some twenty pages to their "annihilation." Under these cir"I called you Willie?" incredulously.cumstances, the invitation addressed to "Yes, you did, indeed," he said, smiling; "but you see, the old lady's charm has worked after all, and so we'll give it the credit of the whole business and the benefit of the doubt." I think neither he nor she ever quite knew how it happened; but when Violet heard the story of the fan, she solemnly declared that there was magic in it. "The moment it flew open when he caught my hand," she said, when telling Daddy of Sir Piers Trevor, "I looked right through that man's soul as one might look through a pane of glass; and I knew that he didn't care a button for me. I really do believe it has a power of letting one who holds it open see into the minds of those to whom he is speaking-else why should you have have "Clawed hold of you so unceremoniously," he ended. "Why, my darling, because I dare say you didn't know it but you called me Willie!" 66 me by men who must have had a full knowledge of my views, and a deep sense of responsibility in the selection of their speakers, seemed to me such a sign of the times, and so striking a proof, among very many others, of the extent to which, durling the last few years, the Church of England, without breaking for a moment with her immemorial past, or throwing over even a fragment of her time-honored and sacred title-deeds, had been able to move with the age, and to expand in moral and im-religious sympathy, no less than in practical benevolence and multifarious energy, that I was strongly tempted to spring at the proposal. Violet Daverel put the fan together, and then, bending her head, dropped a gentle little kiss upon the unintelligible hieroglyphics. "I shall always love that old negro woman," she said gently. "I wish that she were here, that I might give it to her instead of to the fan." "Great heavens be thanked, that's possible!" Daddy cried. "Give it to me, darling, instead." After much consideration I declined it. I did so entirely on the ground that, dur ing the twenty minutes allowed by the in exorable laws of the Congress, it would be impossible to give even the barest outline of the facts of Mohammedan progress in Africa, much less to draw the inferences which I should wish to draw from them, and to hedge them in with all the qualifications and reserves which so complex and so sacred a subject must needs suggest to any serious mind. By flinging the bare conclusions, at which I had ultimately arrived, at the heads of my hearers, without indicating the processes by which I had arrived at them, I should give needless offence. I should be misunderstood and misrepresented, and, what was much more important, the cause which I had most at heart, the sympathetic appreciation of a great and, after all, a kindred religion, would be retarded rather than advanced. I gave up the project with much reluctance, and I am bound to say that that regret was intensified when, a few days ago, came across the report, given in the newspapers, of the epigrammatic and telling paper by Canon Isaac Taylor of York, to whom, as I presume, the invitation had, on my declining it, been transferred by the authorities of the Congress. I could see, at a glance, that without, so far as appeared, any adequate preparation or study of the subject at first hand, he had rushed with headlong heedlessness upon all the dangers which had deterred or daunted me; and, what more nearly concerned me, that, while the views which he thrust on a sensitive and excited audience were as nearly as possible identical with those which, thirteen years ago, I had promulgated in my book "Mohammed and Mohammedanism," they were couched in an exaggerated form, and without any of the modifications or explanations which I should have thought essential. Whatever Canon Isaac Taylor's intentions, the net result of his paper has been well expressed by one of his critics who has long lived in Algeria thus: "Canon Taylor has constructed, at the expense of Christianity, a rose-colored picture of Islam, by a process of comparison in which Christianity is arraigned for failures in practice, of which Christendom is deeply and penitently conscious, no account being taken of Christian precept; while Islam is judged by its better precepts only, no account being taken of the frightful shortcomings in Mohammedan practice, even from the standard of the Koran.' One good result, though it is difficult, under the circumstances, for me to feel any gratitude to Canon Taylor for it, may, no doubt, indirectly follow from the crudities which he promulgated before so influential a gathering. More attention has been and will be called to the subject, and out of the heated discussion which is now going on, we may hope that the truth will ultimately emerge. But even this advantage has, in the mean time, its serious drawbacks, for thoughtless and vehement eulogy naturally provokes an equally vehement and unreasoning detraction. And now, with the kind permission of the editor of this review, I will endeavor to do here what I could not have done in the twenty minutes allowed me by the Church Congress, and set forth, in outline at least, what I conceive to be the main facts connected with the progress of Islam in Africa; what, as appears to me, it has done, is doing, and can do - what also it cannot do-for the negro race; what Christendom or Christianity - - for the two are not, as Canon Taylor appears often to imagine, synonymous and convertible terms - have done, or not done, or may yet do for them; what attitude, in view of these facts and inferences, should be taken by Christians in reference to the great opposing, and yet kindred, creed, and how, in particular, Christian missions will be affected thereby. If I often appear to agree with Canon Taylor in his statements and conclusions, it is little wonder, for, in so doing, I am only agreeing with myself, and seem to be hearing my own book of years past read aloud to me. If I differ from him, as I sometimes shall, it is, partly, for the reasons which I have already indicated; partly also, because, in the thirteen years which have passed since the first edition of my book appeared, I have, as far as possible amid other permanent occupations and special studies, not shut my eyes or ears to what was going on in Africa. As the result of what I then wrote on the subject, it has been my happiness to receive many private communications, and to form many intimate friendships with negro missionaries, negro philanthropists, and negro princes. In particular, I have been in frequent communication, both by letter and in person, with Mr. Edward Blyden, whom I regard as one of the most remarkable men, and whose book, entitled "Christianity, Mohammedanism, and the Negro Race," which has recently appeared, I regard, taking into consideration all the circumstances, as one of the most remarkable books I have ever met. Many scattered lights have, no doubt, been thrown upon the complex questions connected with the condition of Africa and its religious future by the long line of has studied the negro wherever he is to enterprising travellers, of self-sacrificing be found in the West Indies, where he missionaries, of earnest philanthropists was himself born; in the United States, who have visited the country, from the both before and since emancipation; in times of Ibn Batuta or Leo Africanus the English settlement of Sierra Leone, down to those of Mungo Park or Barth, and in the republic of Liberia, where a Moffat or Livingstone. These men have thin varnish of European civilization often gone to Africa, have travelled or lived serves only to mask or to destroy his indiamong the natives, have studied their viduality; and, in the Muslim and pagan manners, have endeavored to sympathize communities of the interior, where a white with and understand them, and have come face has been but rarely seen. His book back to their homes, laden with the may make its way slowly at first; but I guesses, the hopes, or the fears, the diffi- venture to think it will form a new startculties, the dangers, or the disappoint- ing-point in the history of his race, and ments, which any attempt to grapple with will seriously and permanently modify the so vast a problem must needs involve. views which Europeans have hitherto held But, hitherto, no light has shone, no voice of them and of their future. I wish I had has come, audible at all events to the outer space to quote largely from his pages, but world, from Africa itself. It is in the must content myself here by referring pages of Mr. Blyden's book that the great those who are interested in the subject to dumb, dark continent has, at last, begun the work itself; and, meanwhile, not conto speak, and in tones which, if I mistake tent to say with Pontius Pilate that "what not, even those who most differ from his I have written, I have written," and, availconclusions will be glad to listen to and ing myself of the advantages to which I wise to ponder. The essays they contain have referred, I would endeavor to handle have been written at very different times again the subject of Islam in Africa, modiand cover widely different portions of the fying, or strengthening, or unsaying any African field, but they are all inspired by statements which, in the light of longer a common purpose, and converge towards study and a wider knowledge, may appear the same conclusions, and in their pathos to me to require it. and their passion, their patriotic enthusi asm and their philosophic calm, their range of sympathy and their genuine reserve of power, they will, I think, quite rrespective of the importance of the questions which they handle, arrest the attention of even the most casual reader. If ever any one spoke upon his special subject with a right to be heard upon it, it is Mr. Blyden, and for this simple reason, that his whole life has been a preparation for it. With physical energy, and literary ability, and general intellectual power, which, had he been a European, would have enabled him to fill and to adorn almost any public post, a great traveller and an accomplished linguist, equally familiar with Hebrew and Arabic, with Greek and Latin, with five European and with several African languages, he has deliberately chosen to consecrate all his gifts to what must, once and again in his career, have seemed to him an almost thankless and hopeless task, the elevation and regeneration of his race. A negro of the negroes, and keenly alive to their sufferings, their shortcomings, and their vices, he has, nevertheless, an unwavering belief in their future; and that future, who can say how much his single efforts may, with the help of those whom his book may, now and hereafter, influence, go far to secure? He First, then, what are the leading facts as regards the geographi cal extent of Islam in Africa? They are very imperfectly realized, even now, by many of those who speak and write upon the subject. Ever since the conqueror Akbar swept in one sweep of unbroken conquest from the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules, and spurred his horse into the waves of the Atlantic, indignant that he could carry the Koran no further in that direction, Islam has kept its grip -- for over twelve hundred years, that is on the whole of the Barbary States; in other words, on the whole of the regions which, in ancient times, served as the only connecting link between Africa and the outer world, the field of Egyptian and of Phoenician, of Roman and of Vandal civilization; the headquarters of African and the birthplace of Latin Christianity, as the great names of Tertullian and of Cyprian, of Arnobius and of Augustine, may well remind us. Turned southward by the bend of the continent, Islam next crossed the Great Desert, asserting its sway over the wild nomad races who had never owned any other control, moral, political, or religious - the Berbers, the Touaricks, and the Tibbus. Wherever in this vast expanse, this waterless ocean, three times as large as the Mediterranean, there is a salt-mine, a spring of brackish |