had not been worth the money. But who could expect that, and of whom? Signor Nicolo looked for praise, and I gave it warmly.

"But you did not pump him, on the strength of it?" I asked; and meeting an indignant glance, I qualified my question. "What I mean is, you did not exactly endeavour your duty towards Sûr Imar, and your desire to protect him from the schemes of that other fellow did not induce you to inquire, I suppose, what this pair of rogues could be driving at? I am not sure that I should have let him go without that."

"To a limited extent perhaps I did," Signor Nicolo answered with a candid smile; "not that I put any temptation in his way to make him turn traitor to his master. But simply that casually, as things came about he cast away in some degree that cowardly veil of caution, which is always so abhorrent to our better feelings. Nine people out of ten would have cross-examined him. But I did nothing of the sort. Only from some things he let slip I gathered a fair general idea of the game those two are playing. Or rather that other fellow; for to Strogue it can make no difference, unless the bargain is-no play, no pay. Hafer's game is to get possession of the lovely Dariel, as you must have suspected long ago; not for her beauty-those fellows out there pitch-and-toss for that kind of thing but for the start it will give him, in the universal race of robbery. You must not be mild enough, Mr Cranleigh, to suppose that you have seen any sample of the Caucasus in the noble Sûr Imar, and his sensitive daughter, or even in the model henchman

Stepan. If the camp in your valley had been of the general type, you would not have had a sheep left long ago, much less a

cock with a crow in his throat. Ragamuffins' is the proper name for most of them. And although these Lesghians, take them all in all, are about the pick of the basket, you would be in the wrong box altogether, if you took them for sweet innocents. They are simply under their chieftain's thumb; and by ancient tribal law, he can chop off their heads when he pleases. This keeps them in order; and they pay for their milk, instead of lifting cattle. Prince Hafer, however, is not under any fealty to Sûr Imar. So far from that, his great aim is to be Lord of the Ossets, and the Kheusurs too, and Karthlos Tower, which is a noble place, and might defy an army for a twelvemonth. Hafer is cunning, but has too much temper; and worst of all, he has not steered clear of the many traps set by civilisation for a young savage with his pockets full. He has fallen among a

bad lot, a company of young rakes, contemptuous of women, and yet thoroughly in their power.'

"What! would he venture near Dariel, after being in such vile company? We have heard that he was almost too good to live. She gave me so grand an account of him, that I thought it was all up with my poor chance. But what a falling off is here! The Prince of all virtues, the paragon of modesty, the hero of all chivalry-and now he won't even sham! Can you explain it, Mr Nickols?"

"No; that's no business of mine. Nature does it. But I shall hear more about it soon, and get a flood of light let in. In London you never know anything well, from hearing such a lot about everything. But it is not quite the same in the Caucasus. You don't hear much there; but you attend to it. And now you will be surprised to be told, that after so many years of

hearing next to nothing of that part of the world, and never seeing one of their celestial peaks, except in a dream, I am likely to know more about them than when I lived there. Ah, if I hadn't got a wife, and three daughters, and I have let out so much, like a jolly fool, that they won't have French stuff on their birthdays, I should be ready to be off again; though I could never do the djedje now; and the love of sport is not in me, as it is in all true-born Englishmen."

He looked regretful, and perhaps remorseful against his mingled parentage; for there was a vein of the Israelite in him, which saddens and deepens the outlook, without showing any sport, except a gold disc to

shoot at.

"Never mind," I answered him, though sorry to have to do it; "you get your little excitements, in your way. And although they are not like ours altogether, they pay ever so much better in the end."

e;

"Let us come back," he said, thinking in his heart, perhaps, that he could do very well without my sympathy; "my proceedings only bear upon your case in an odd sort of way, which may come to nothing. You remember that I told you of my Russian friend, whom I met at Odessa, twenty years ago, or more. Through him I first went into those savage parts, where he lost his life and it was a narrow shave that I survived to tell of it; for which I have to thank Sûr Imar. You may have forgotten, but I think I must have told you that my Russian had a brother, an officer in the army then closing round the forces of Shamyl. Very well, who should call upon me a few days after I told you about that, but the very same Russian officer, now second in command of the Caucasus Division, General Stranglomoff himself. He was in London, about some military

business, and knowing my intimacy with his poor brother, he did me the honour of calling to hear some particulars of the sad occurrence. I described it as well as I could; and then he said, brushing up his English, as I brushed up my Russian, whenever there was a gap between us-'I am not a jeweller, Signor, and of precious stones I have not any knowledge; but place thine eyes upon this, is it good?' He wore a white glove of soft ratskin, and upon it was the rich green light of the finest emerald I have seen, since I was at Warsaw.

"Plenty, plenty, twenty, fiftyten, a thousand! I pray you to accept this pebble, Signor, for my brother's sake,' he said with a very graceful bow; 'he was taken away through these, and I desire no advantage of them.' And with that he shed a tear which made me think how much we undervalue that fine race. There is no kinderhearted man on earth, and no more perfect gentleman, than a Russian of the highest order.

"Well, sir, I sent my own nephew out-Jack Nickols, a wonderfully plucky fellow; not much eye for a stone; but sure to stick to his orders, and tell you the truth. If you can't be satisfied with that, good-bye to your chance of keeping anybody very long; for the sharp ones will soon begin to rogue you. Jack is as good a bit of English Metal as you could pick up from the lias to the granite. And not too clever. In fact, Mr Cranleigh, you remind me of him, at every turn."

I bowed very deeply at this lovely compliment, with a glance which I meant to be ironical. But Signor Nicolo was too busy with his thoughts to perceive the stern justice he had done me.

"Emeralds are going up," he proceeded, as if I were one of them, "and I should not be surprised if

the true grass-green became the rage for the next few years. There are only three gems that will always hold their own, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. The rest go up and down, according to the fashion; and emeralds have been unduly in the shade. But now they are worth looking after again; and my nephew is the boy to do it. Hit or miss, he will do his best; and we have made an arrangement with the Russian General, under which he is bound to back him up. Jack is not very strong at letter-writing, and the post is not too brisk out there. But he has been on the spot for some time now, and he has made a very good beginning."

All this to me was little more than cold and cloudy comfort. Here was the winter close at hand, the winter of the frosty Caucasus; the friends I loved become strangers to me, and lost to my sight among savages; my own fair fame in some mysterious manner assailed and blasted; and the only hope of further tidings, or redress, yet visible lay in the chances of a roving jeweller's commission ! Nickols might take it all quite calmly. His heart was set, and cemented as one might almost say-upon precious stones, and hard enough, as it seemed to me, to grind them for trade purposes. But in my impatience I wronged him there.

"You must try to make the best of it, Mr Cranleigh," he went on, as if he understood my thoughts. "You have been horribly slandered, no doubt; and the sweet young lady has swallowed wicked lies, all the more readily because she is a sweet young lady, and for that reason credulous and jealous. But there are a lot of things in your favour still, if you will let me set them before you. I have not the least idea what you are charged with, any more than you have.

But whatever it may be, the charge will grow fainter, and the faith in it weaker, as time goes on; and the inventor of it will become more hateful. Probably Hafer has invented it; and even while she listens to it, her heart will turn against him. I know what a good woman is, because I have had to deal with them. A man who runs women down, is either a bad lot himself, or a most unlucky fellow. Moreover she dislikes that cousin of hers, if he is her cousin, for his violence, and roughness, and haughty ways. All that will increase, when he gets home again, and contrasts all their hard and uncivilised life with the luxuries and joys of London. She will turn against him more and more; and her father will never compel her to marry against her wishes. Moreover, there is likely to be some time yet before his schemes come to a head. My young savage has overthrown his cast, or that of his mother Marva. In his urgency to get them back straightway to the land of the mountain without the flood, he has sent them round by St Petersburg. He insisted so much on the peril they were in of losing all their Lesghian rights, that Sûr Imar resolved, very wisely as I thought, to assert them at headquarters. So Stepan and others were left behind to take the heavy goods straight to Poti perhaps. This was a floorer for Prince Hafer, and he gnashed his teeth, which he dyes yellow; for he is the Devil, and no mistake, when he can't have his own way. You don't consider me a suspicious man, Mr Cranleigh, do you?"

"A little too much the other way; as is the case with all fine natures," I replied, according to my thoughts; for he was evidently taking my part now.

"In that case, listen to my firm

belief. I am not at all up to the tone and style of what those mountaineers do now. And of course I may be as much behind the age, as Sûr Imar wants to be in front of it. But to my mind men are men always, and you can't improve them suddenly. A lot of sham comes in with some races; but not with stubborn chaps like these. Sûr Imar may print a million copies of the Sermon on the Mount; but it won't go down with them. Or it goes down, and never comes up again. You may as well pour gold into a cesspool. My firm belief is that this Prince Hafer intends to get our noble friend out there, marry his daughter, and then shoot him, and combine that heritage with his own. Ah yes!"

Nickols had a very quiet and even pleasant manner of imparting the most atrocious thoughts, that could ever drive another man out of his mind. I looked at him to ask whether he could mean it; and he smiled and answered, "You may take it for a fact."

"But his own sister, his twin sister, the darling of his childhood -Marva! How could all such wickedness go on without her knowledge? It is impossible to imagine that she would allow it."

"She sent her son to England for that very purpose," Mr Nickols replied, in a tone of deep conviction. “It may not sound sisterly; but it is true. There is the blood-feud between them. That they have been in the womb together only makes it deadlier. I know what I am talking of."

If he did and he spoke as if it were an ordinary matter-I can only be certain that I did not. My brain was quite stunned with such horrible ideas; and I almost felt as if Dariel herself would be too dear, at the price of any connection with such vile and bloodthirsty savages. Then I felt bitter reproach at blaming a sweet gentle darling for what she could not help; and after providing for quick communication, I hurried away, with my heart in a whirl.

In whatever condition a man may be placed, under the will of Heaven, there is generally something to alleviate it, if he seek perseveringly; and always something to aggravate it, without any exertion on his part. In my present trouble I had several consolations; and the best and sweetest of them was the kindness of my sister Grace. She had leaped, without looking for any signal, or even any ground to jump from, to the solid conclusion that her poor brother George had been treated most cruelly, shamefully, shockingly, and if there be worse than this, put it on the pile. And yet she never spoke of it-never at

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXX.

least to me (though she may have filled the world with it to her beloved Jackson), but let me know her sympathies by a silent lift of cover, as a large and capable hamboiler does; when a tin saucepan would have blown its top off. A man loathes sympathy, if he is of English race; nothing irritates him more than for other fellows to come prying down into what goes on inside him. Even to his dearest friend, he does not stretch out his heart, like a washerwoman's line; what may be inside it is his own concern; and like a gentleman, he must not be too curious about that, so long as it leads him into nothing mean. All I can say is that I

3 H

the true grass-green became the rage for the next few years. There are only three gems that will always hold their own, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. The rest go up and down, according to the fashion; and emeralds have been unduly in the shade. But now they are worth looking after again; and my nephew is the boy to do it. Hit or miss, he will do his best; and we have made an arrangement with the Russian General, under which he is bound to back him up. Jack is not very strong at letter-writing, and the post is not too brisk out there. But he has been on the spot for some time now, and he has made a very good beginning."

All this to me was little more than cold and cloudy comfort. Here was the winter close at hand, the winter of the frosty Caucasus; the friends I loved become strangers to me, and lost to my sight among savages; my own fair fame in some mysterious manner assailed and blasted; and the only hope of further tidings, or redress, yet visible lay in the chances of a roving jeweller's commission! Nickols might take it all quite calmly. His heart was set, and cementedas one might almost say-upon precious stones, and hard enough, as it seemed to me, to grind them for trade purposes. But in my impatience I wronged him there.

"You must try to make the best of it, Mr Cranleigh," he went on, as if he understood my thoughts. "You have been horribly slandered, no doubt; and the sweet young lady has swallowed wicked lies, all the more readily because she is a sweet young lady, and for that reason credulous and jealous. But there are a lot of things in your favour still, if you will let me set them before you. I have not the least idea what you are charged with, any more than you have.

But whatever it may be, the charge will grow fainter, and the faith in it weaker, as time goes on; and the inventor of it will become more hateful. Probably Hafer has invented it; and even while she listens to it, her heart will turn against him. I know what a good woman is, because I have had to deal with them. A man who runs women down, is either a bad lot himself, or a most unlucky fellow. Moreover she dislikes that cousin of hers, if he is her cousin, for his violence, and roughness, and haughty ways. All that will increase, when he gets home again, and contrasts all their hard and uncivilised life with the luxuries and joys of London. She will turn against him more and more; and her father will never compel her to marry against her wishes. Moreover, there is likely to be some time yet before his schemes come to a head. My young savage has overthrown his cast, or that of his mother Marva. In his urgency to get them back straightway to the land of the mountain without the flood, he has sent them round by St Petersburg. He insisted so much on the peril they were in of losing all their Lesghian rights, that Sûr Imar resolved, very wisely as I thought, to assert them at headquarters. So Stepan and others were left behind to take the heavy goods straight to Poti perhaps. This was a floorer for Prince Hafer, and he gnashed his teeth, which he dyes yellow; for he is the Devil, and no mistake, when he can't have his own way. You don't consider me a suspicious man, Mr Cranleigh, do you?"

"A little too much the other way; as is the case with all fine natures," I replied, according to my thoughts; for he was evidently taking my part now.

"In that case, listen to my firm