fingers, and a long end reaching to the ground, knotted and fringed, and serving as a whip.

Leaving the Harnai valley, and turning our backs on steam, we still found the telegraph by our side for the first three marches; after that we were beyond all the inventions of the nineteenth century except pigeon-post, which was intermittent, however, on account of the operations of the hawks. We rode up the splendid gorge called Mekrab Tangi, a cañon almost as fine as the Chuppa rift, but with greener sides, covered with long creeping capers and bushes of maidenhair fern. As we rose into the hills once more, giant partridges became plentiful; and we passed through groves of wild olive-trees, some of them of extraordinary size and therefore fabulous age. We reached Dilkuna at dark, to find our tea ready prepared for us in the engineers' bungalow, the only house, by Sir Robert Sandeman's most excellent and well-known butler, "Mr. Bux," a magnificent-looking personage, who once passed as a prince with the London crowd when his master brought him to England. Sir Robert and I had bustled on along the road in spite of the fine scenery, and we got in first; but before the moon rose clear of the great mountains Sir Frederick Roberts rode in with the staff and the escort of Bengal cavalry, and our party was complete for dinner in Sir Robert Sandeman's great tent, in which there was a suspicion of frost about the air, so that poshteens and fur-lined jackets became dinner-dress. We are the guests of Sir Robert Sandeman from Harnai to Loralai, and from Loralai to the Punjab. But for our halt of two days at Loralai we are to be the guests of the Sixth (Prince of Wales's) Bengal Cavalry.

in front of us in troops and droves. The road was none too wide, and the corners were made dangerous by our occasionally meeting camels just at the worst places. Horses have never liked camels since their first meeting in classical times, when the camels of the Persian army under Cyrus terrified the horses of the Lydians under Croesus. No amount of habit ever makes even central - Asian horses thoroughly used to camels. Moreover, cam. els know no "sides," and are just as likely to take the one side as the other, the inside as the out, so that one never feels thoroughly safe in meeting them at a corner until one has passed them. From the ridge we rode through a wide, straight valley, bearing a great likeness to Bridg er's Pass and Laramie plains in the Rocky Mountains, by which I journeyed in 1866 before the railway, and in 1875 by train. At the half-way station-house I changed my this day's horse, to which I had given a sore back in return for a sore knee which he had given me, and obtained another and better "catch-'em," a white Arab with a noble tail. We went so fast that Colonel Jennings, commanding at Loralai, and another officer, who had ridden out to meet the party, told us that we were too early for the arrangements. By nine o'clock in the morning we had done our one-and-twenty miles, and soon after we reached the rich valley of Smallan, filled with splendid myrtles, upon which the unpoetic Baluchis feed their omnivo rous "catch-'em" horses. A few minutes later we had arrived at our destination at Sinjawi. The chief rode up and inspected a post of native infantry, and we soon got our second breakfast in a second tent. The plan of march is, that the moment dinner is over "Mr. Bux," packing the glasses and the chairs, of which there are no duplicates, marches, starting about ten o'clock at night on the fast camels, to the breakfast place, and there goes to bed, after looking up his supplies. The result is that when we arrive with tremendous appetites "Mr. Bux" is always ready to smile, salaam, and say, Good-morning, sah. Breakfast leddy, sah." Sinjawi Fort stands at the meeting of several frontier valleys. Kites sweep round it in the clear air and give it the look of an Indian station. So pretty is the green valley as it curls through hills, some golden yellow and some orange red, that General Elles and Captain Rawlinson climbed a high, stony knoll twice in the day to make between them a panoramic sketch, that came out as satisfactorily as

In the morning Abdul, Sir Robert Sandeman's bearer, brought me my little breakfast before light, and Sir Robert and I were off so early that we left behind us our "catch-'em-alive" escort, except some few who frantically caught us alive by a short cut up the mountain-side. Rising rapidly from Dilkuna camp, which stands at some fifty-four hundred feet, we reached a ridge of sixty-six hundred feet by sunrise, and enjoyed that magnificent spectacle which in dry mountain countries daily compensates the traveller for all his petty troubles, such as night cold, noon sun, dust, cracked lips, and parched throat. In the half-hour next after sunrise the military road was literally covered with partridges of two kinds, running along it

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at high noon, the light gleamed on the softly shadowed, richly colored walls of the prosperous Persian city. From the lustrous tiles of purple porcelain encrusting gorgeous mosques, on whose walls the name of Allah was blazoned, linked with a thousand epithets, even to the rags of beggar and pedlar, chastened color glowed everywhere. But the focus of the city's heaped gorgeousness was in the great market with its many bazaars, where the pulsations of business were even now slackening into the repose of noontide; for it was then too hot even for an acclimatized Oriental to work, and, the hour having been proclaimed, labor rapidly subsided.

A little longer than elsewhere its hum and chatter hung about the stalls where fruit and other kinds of food were sold. In the bazaar of the brass-workers the change from clatter to hush was sharply defined. Most of the brass-workers went home to pray and eat, and then to sip coffee and smoke in the company of their wives. A few who were lazy, or whose homes were distant or unattractive, bought food at the cook-shops and carried it to the stall of a popular merchant who kept coffee and the kalian or hubble-bubble ready for all comers.

One man rose from sitting on his heels, put aside the lantern he had been hammering at all the morning, and reached down a covered basin of curds and a lump of bread from a shelf, placing them beside the spot where he was in the habit of sitting. Then he looked out of the front of his little shop as far as he could see up and down the market, his large dark eyes moving with slow reluctance, as though to prolong the illusion that something, that he knew would not be there, might have been conjured thither by some friendly sprite.

His search ended, he hooked a curtain across the open front of his booth, and hid himself and his doings from sight. Yet, though he had put away his ostensible employment, the lantern, he must have gone to work again on something, after a very hasty meal, for from behind the curtain came clear the sound of his solitary hammer, tap, tap — tap, tap, tap. Greedy of money perhaps, grudging the rest that others freely took; but no one, it seemed, troubled themselves very much about him - he was only Selim the unsociable. There was nobody of any account just now to be interested in his movements; the brass-workers' bazaar contained besides him only dogs and boys, and only the

boys were awake; the dogs were as sound asleep as good Moslems, lying all together in a heap, with heads resting on, and backs against, each other, and legs sticking out very straight in every direction. They complained a good deal in their sleep, having perhaps only time in their slumbers to realize the full pathos of the numerous kicks and disappointments that they un-derwent when awake. Now and then one would start and turn over, and there would come fierce, snarling snaps from those which he disturbed.

The boys were left to look after the various shops while the owners were away; a boy being the only thing that can remain energetic through an Eastern noonday. They were mostly noisy, squabbling little Persians, but on the steps of the largest and wealthiest booth, wherein there was a store of jewels and jewelled work, sprawled a large Egyptian lad — a picturesque blackguard from Cairo, in crimson fez and white garments, with a pair of turquoise-encrusted pistols stuck in his waist-shawl. He affected a superiority over the rest, and smoked his hubblebubble with a grown-up air as he reclined disdaining the whispers and amusement about him. As a big boy the others accepted his pretensions; had he been a man they would probably have conspired to make his life a burden. They conversed in snappish whispers, interrupting one another continually; he smoked lazily, rolling from time to time a crafty eye in the direction of the booth of Selim the unsociable, attracted by the restless taptapping that went on within.

A raid was being concerted on the fruit and sweetmeat bazaars; three of the strongest and sharpest lads were to execute it, whilst the rest of the boys looked after the brass-workers' shops. A few final directions and explanations, and the three boys slunk stealthily out of sight, concealing their faces as much as possible.

Then silence reigned in the brass-workers' bazaar except for the hammering of Selim. His hammer struck, it could be heard now, at irregular intervals. A fellow-craftsman could have told that Selim was finishing some piece of work, turning it over and over, giving a skilful stroke just now and then where it was needed; now stopping to use the file on a rough edge, or the knife to chip off a piece of the pitch bed on which it had been beaten out, and fragments of which still clung to its intricacies.

A distant barking and shouting_announced that the raid was beginning. The

very smallest boy in the bazaar, as he sat trembling on the steps of the booth he guarded, opened his eyes to their full width, and looked burdened with guilt. The cap he wore was made of an old piece of stuff that had once been green, and in the badinage of the brass market he was called the descendant of the Prophet. The sound of blows was distantly audible, the shouting became less, and louder, and | less again as the pursuers followed the marauders about the intricacies of the market.

At length the pursued regained the brass bazaar—in a moment their spoils were hidden away, and themselves disposed in attitudes of tranquillity and meditation. A few minutes later a couple of men with sticks appeared, looked round the bazaar, seemed reassured and then again suspicious, and finally addressed themselves to the Egyptian. He looked at them craftily as he delayed his answer, relishing the suspense of the other lads. It would have amused him greatly to hand them over to a beating, but it was more natural to lie, so his reply started the pursuers on a further search.

Then the spoils were divided, the lad from Cairo continuing to smoke in a lofty manner. The portion of sweetmeat allotted to the green-capped boy attracted his attention. "Come here," he called, "grandson of Mohammed (on whom be peace)." The other boys felt it, as he obviously did, a condescension that he should adopt their nickname, but dignity can be resumed at any moment and sweetmeats pass away irrevocably, and he knew no other name for the child. The "grandson of Mohammed" approached the Egyptian, proffering a moderate gift with his right hand, and concealing the bulk of his treasure in his left behind his back. When he came within reach, the Cairene dropped his pipe-stem and grabbed both the child's hands; the right surrendered its gift, the left remained closed, until it too yielded at a threat from the other's dog-like teeth. The little boy retired in tears to his booth, and the laughter of his comrades was an act of homage to the Cairene's rough joke. The descendant of the Prophet continued to sob on his shop steps, the others chattered, the Egyptian munched and smoked; Selim's tap-tapping went on with steady irregularity.

And now came silently into the quiet bazaar a man who seemed fascinated by the sound of the unsociable lantern-maker's hammer. A man evidently in the habit of eaves-dropping, for he did not

draw attention to himself by looking round to see if he were the object of it, but walked quietly to Selim's booth, drew the curtain stealthily a little aside, and looked eagerly in. His eye was caught and held by a piece of work that lay on the craftsman's lap -a large and beautifully proportioned perfume-holder of brass, of that rich-colored Oriental brass with much copper in it, that is so far mellower than the sharper yellow amalgam of Western civilizations. It was pierced in lace-like designs, the piercing itself a monument of patient art; the unpierced portions were incised with delicate scrollwork, with strange or beautiful figures, and with graceful inscriptions whose characters were fantastically interlaced. The stranger drew in his breath at the sight of the treasure, and his eyes glared wolflike with the longing to clutch and possess.

Think with me a little, you Westerns who read this Eastern story, what the perfume-holder means. With you the word "scented " carries a half-reproach the scent-holder is a toilet requisite, an almost degraded thing. You know scent, but you do not know perfume; you lack the dry fresh air of Persia, and perhaps the nostrils of the Persian. In the homes of the East the pierced perfume-holder stands in its honored place, containing its mixture of precious matters that, like the heart of the lover, will be sweet as they burn and fade. Charcoal from the brazier is sprinkled on the perfume, and each passing breath fans the rich incandescence.

To lie and dream awake in the cool air of the zenana, and when some large-eyed, silent-footed girl has passed through the room, to watch the delicate blue curls of scented smoke jet suddenly out from the brass vessel and slide passionately after her, and, having lost her, spread and spread in widening circles until they strike your senses with deliciousness, is it not to behold the very image of love?- of the poetic love that aspires in throbbing verse, in verse that affects not the cruelhearted one whose gracious movement has drawn it from the burning soul; yet is not purposeless since it sweetens your life and mine. If you have read those stories of the East that are rendered into your own tongue, you will remember how they wan der and digress even in the very stress and emergency of the story, and you will pardon an Oriental, though dis-Orientalized, if he digress when most, if it ever can, his story should interest you. Even to a Persian born and bred there is no