"Fear not, beautiful Zahira," cried the deceiver, "the subject I detest has been this night discussed and ended. No more of money: tomorrow let us speak of other things; of youth and beauty, blooming as it ever is at sweet nine.. Suffer me, O gentle fair! to make your soft cheeks and youthful form the theme of my discourse. O do not take your delicate fingers from my forehead; let me press them once more to the crown of my head!"

teen.

"Inshallah," cried the widow," you are a Mejnoun, Effendi; what have you smoked haskis? and are you intoxicated, that you speak to a widow after this manner? I shall be very angry if you do so to-morrow. Be as early as you can, and remember your promise of silence on what has passed."

"Blessings on the sultana of my soul," cried Mourad, as he descended the stairs; "may her condescension never diminish to the most faithful of friends!" and in a second he was in the open street.

CHAPTER X.

Look to the bark: I'll not be long before I call upon

thee.

Winter's Tale.

"I'll not get up," cried Stephenaki, "turning himself on his carpet, for any man living, at this time of night. Take your hand, I say, from my shoulder, whoever you are; and let a man have his lawful rest."

"Dog of an infidel," said Mourad, shaking him with still greater violence; "rouse yourself this moment, and leave off your muttering. The morning is dawning, and we must be away before the day lightens more. There is no time, I tell you, for yawning; stretch your lazy limbs when you are in the boat."

"Ma, to theo," exclaimed the Greek, "it is

a hard case a man cannot have a night's sleep. Where do you want to go, (throw me that antery,) at such an unseasonable time? Well, I am getting up; what would you have more? I cannot go to sea without my sherwals. Not have an hour's sleep before I am shook as if a squall had capsized the house. I say, I am ready to go; but I'll not be called a dog by any Turk breathing; infidel, indeed, heaven knows which of us. You need not stand frowning at me—did I call you an infidel ?"

"No,"replied Mourad, " you dare not say so; but whatever you think, for the sake of the prophet, (I mean for the sake of your ancestors,) hurry on your clothes. If I have disturbed you, I will pay every hour I have curtailed of your repose. That's a brave fellow, that countryman of your's whose tomb you showed me on the promontory of Sigeum, as you called it; he would be ashamed of his descendant, where he to see him rubbing his eyes when he was ordered to march."

By this time Stephenaki was equipped, the luggage was packed up, and they were on the point of starting for Suda, where the boat was

hauled up on the dry land, when Mourad remembered he was leaving the Armenian's widow in an awkward predicament, without money or friends, in a strange country. He had promised her assistance, and he was now in a better condition to fulfil that promise than when he made it. He enclosed a dozen sequins in a scrap of paper, and directing the package to Miriam, he deposited it on the divan, trusting to a casual visit of the lady for its reaching her hands, as well as to the the honour of Hassan, whom he had liberally paid for his lodging the preceding evening. The sun was just kissing the cold white brow of Mount Ida, as they reached the bay; it was a dawn for a Zabian to worship his glorious planet on the peak of that mountain, which still bears the name of the father of all the gods, "the mountain of Jupiter." There might "the child of the sun behold the grand luminary in all his gorgeous splendour, slowly emerging from his ocean bed, and brightening as he arose from sea to sky, till his beams, no longer bounding the horizon, streaked the high clouds with burnished gold; and lighting up the heavens, irradiated the

joyful earth. There might he have beheld his new-born idol dispensing light and beauty on the world beneath, adorning the valley with glittering dew-drops, and clothing the rugged sides of savage rocks with streaming light, and purple floods of liquid beauty.

There might he look down on the masses of gloom, marking the various towns and villages which speckled the coast here and there, and wonder at the insignificance of mosques and mansions diminished to the size of mole-hills. As the brilliant god towered in the heavens, he would behold the grey mist of the morning rolling over the tops of the houses, and structure after structure shining more distinctly, as the white walls became more dazzlingly conspi

cuous.

There, as he bowed down at the altar of light, had a Moslem refuted the error of his faith, and pushed conviction home at the point of his cymetar, the poor Zabian might have sought the palliation of his idolatry in the effulgence of his planet, and have pointed for his excuse to the glittering corruscation of the