New Zealand, so it does not really matter where I settle down."

"But, my dear sir-Mr. Eldridge-it's only fair to tell you that Studley is a most unattractive part of the country for an idle man. There's nothing in the shape of sport, except a little fishing, and that's some miles off, and the villagers would be, in the eyes of a man of the world, but a set of yokels," and the foolish vicar went on to deteriorate his cause, in his own unworldly fashion.

Mr. Eldridge smiled.

"At least, you will allow me the privilege of looking over your place?" he asked.

"Most certainly!" John Chaloner jumped up, and the two men were presently on their way to the Court. There was something singularly attractive about the new-comer that took the vicar's fancy, and before the old house and its grounds had been inspected, he had poured out the story of his disappointed hopes, the ruin of his lifeplans. In addition, the stranger hailed from New Zealand, and John had many eager questions to put. But Mr. Eldridge appeared to be as ignorant of any one bearing the name of Philip Chaloner out in the colony, as he had been of the late Sam Parratt.

"It was hard, uncommonly hard upon you!" briefly said the stranger, returning to the subject of John's wrongs, and a deep frown gathered on his brow. Then, after a pause, he went on to say that the Court suited him in every respect, and to offer himself as its tenant, at a handsome rent, fairly taking the vicar's breath away.

"Come home and see Fanny about it-my wife, I mean. She would naturally have a good deal to say in the matter. Come and lunch with me at our early dinner."

To this invitation Mr. Eldridge agreed with a marked alacrity. And when Merry returned from the school-house, where she had been faithfully, if not competently, engaged in cutting out garments to clothe the juvenile Studleyites, she found the "stranger genelmun" from The George seated at the vicarage dinner-table with her parents and Tony, already on apparently friendly terms. Something that leaped into the honest grey eyes made the roses in Merry's sweet face deepen in hue. But, curiously enough, neither Mr. P. Eldridge nor the young girl mentioned that they had already met that morning; tacitly, they seemed to agree to ignore the fact.

"I say, Merry," little Tony edged up to his sister after the repast was over, and the vicar had carried off his guest to initiate him in the value of a certain Bartolozzi, the pride of his study. "That Mr. Eldridge is a brick !"

"Yes," absently said Merry. "What did he give you, Tony?" she roused herself to ask pertinently.

"His fishing-rod," innocently said the boy, not a whit offended at Merry's inference. "At least, he has lent it me. And, Merry, it's a whopper, I tell you, a regular beauty! I wish Smithson Minor and the other fellows at school could see it ! "

"Well, Tony, take care you don't break it,

dear," enjoined Merry, who was rather an expert fisherwoman herself. She and Tony made many a summer's day's expedition to the trout stream five miles off.

"He wants to come with us," said Tony abruptly. The boy was hanging on his tall young sister's arm. If there were one being on earth Tony adored it was Merry.

The colour rose on the girl's face. A frightened feeling stirred her heart. Merry was horribly shy of strangers, and as a rule fled out of their reach. But this new-comer, he was different; she could not explain why. She only knew that it would be a strange delight to go fishing with him. So, womanlike, she soberly said what she hoped was not true.

"Nonsense, Tony!

Mr. Eldridge is going away at once, no doubt. He can't be comfortable at The George."

"Oh, yes, he is!" contradicted Tony. "I've been over there with him, just before dinner. He went to fetch something a clean pocket-handkerchief, I expect," interpolated the practical Tony. "And all his luggage, a jolly lot, is there. P. Eldridge is painted on everything, so I suppose his name's Peter.'

"Peter!" Merry looked up disappointedly.

"Well," put in Tony tersely, "you can't throw stones at the chap if it is 'Peter,' Miss Mary Anne!"

Merry laughed out joyously, She always did at any allusion to the only inheritance Aunt Chaloner had left herself.

"I told him "-Tony's small thumb was jerked towards the study-window-"about you being saddled with Aunt Chaloner's name under false pretences. Oh, I gave it to Aunt Chaloner hot, I tell you, and he said it was a shame; and then he laughed, and said that 'Merry' was the sweetest girl's name he had ever heard. And Peter

says

"Oh, Tony," interrupted his scandalised sister, "if you ever call Mr. Eldridge by his Christian name again, I'll certainly tell mother!"

"No you won't, Merry!" persuasively said Master Tony, who feared his mother as he feared no other mortal.

But Tory was right in his surmises. Mr. Eldridge had no intention of quitting The George until all arrangements had been completed for him to move into the Court as its tenant. And, from the need of pressure to hurry them forward, these arrangements seemed likely to take the entire summer to complete themselves. During this interregnum it was incumbent on the vicarage family to help to entertain their prospective tenant. Even Ermy, backed up by the approval of the Rev. Septimus, agreed that too much civility could hardly be shown to an individual willing to pay a handsome rent for the Court, and demanding no repairs; in fact, who seemed eager to bear the expenses of all repairs and alterations himself.

"A model tenant," decided Ermy. "I should think, mother, he is very well off; and, depend upon it, he is engaged, and wants to settle. Septimus thinks so, too."

"Oh!" Mrs. Chaloner looked aggrieved. "Well,

perhaps so. Otherwise, Ermy, I'd been seriously thinking of having dear Gwen home for a holiday. Mrs. Ainslie-Gore might be persuaded to let Merry take Gwen's place as companion for a few weeks, eh?"

Then the two matrons glanced at each other comprehendingly.

"Not a bad idea," said Ermy. "He may not be engaged, after all, you know. And Gwen is such a superior girl, such a manager. Any man would jump at such a prize as Gwen for a wife; Septimus has always said so."

There's been a good deal of time wasted already," said Mrs. Chaloner pensively. "For weeks the poor man has been tramped off his feet by those heedless children, Merry and Tony, as if people were born into the world to do nothing but whip trout-streams!"

"Merry is growing quite a great girl," contemplatively remarked Ermy. "She will be a goodlooking woman, Septimus thinks."

Yes, she is shooting up!" Mrs. Chaloner sighed, in answer to the first part of Ermy's speech. "Gwen wrote that we ought to get her into some large school as pupil-teacher. Your father seems unwilling to part with her though, and of course she is useful in the parish."

Ermy pursed up her mouth, and sniffed slightly as she took her departure homewards, at the idea of Merry's easy-going efforts being dignified by the name of parish-work. Then the young matron's thoughts wandered to the possibility of getting Gwen over for a few weeks. It certainly would be a delightful thing to have dear old Gwen settled at the Court, and by the time Ermy's fat pony reached home she had arranged every fold of the future Mrs. Eldridge's wedding-gown.

While Ermy and her mother were match. making, Merry whipped the trout-stream, day after day, in company with Tony and the "stranger genelmun from The Jarje," as Studley still persisted in calling him.

Life was a rapturous dream, and the girl, ignorant of love's meaning, had given her heart away. Merry knew nothing, even by hearsay, of love-makings. The courtship of her elder sister and the Rev. Septimus had been conducted on a system of staid decorum -everything connected with Ermy was done by system and the girl-child, Merry, had seen nothing to open her ignorant eyes. When love came to herself, Merry only knew it was sweet, passing sweet, that there should be somebody at hand always to mark, with quick appreciation, her lightest word and its meaning; to note the change of a ribbon or a colour in her simple dress; to be sorry when she was sorry, and glad when she was glad. Something like power swelled her innocent heart, and she exulted in it.

But love-Merry did not recognise it, until a day came when she falteringly told the companion, no longer a stranger, of the summer days, that Gwen was coming home for a holiday of some weeks, and that she, Merry, was going away to fill Gwen's place. Then, the girl first realised that her simple heart was gone out of her own keeping into another's. For the love that had,

hitherto, spoken in a thousand silent tongues, was uttered in a rush of eager words that told Merry she was the one woman in all the world to somebody-a good man's choice.

"Who-what do you say you are?" demanded the piteously bewildered vicar, an hour after. He and Fanny sat confronting the tenant of the Court, who was stammering out explanations.

"It's simply impossible!" broke in Mrs. Chaloner bluntly. "You can't be two people. If you are Mr. Peter Eldridge, the New Zealand sheep-farmer, you can't possibly be Philip Chaloner, the boy whom that spiteful old Aunt Chaloner left her money to."

66

'Quite impossible!" echoed the vicar, regarding the young man suspiciously.

"You ask old Crowder, and also the lawyer people in London; they will speak up and tell you that I'm all square!" joyously said the arraigned. "I'm Philip Chaloner's boy. My mother married again, you see. Her second husband was a prosperous sheep farmer-runholder we call such; his name was Eldridge, and as I was only a baby I grew up with his name tacked on to me, never my own. He was as good to me as any father could be, and as they had no children he left me every cent he had, and he died a wealthy man. My mother was already dead. When the old lady at the Court left me her money, too, I took a notion I'd like to see the old country. So I came over, and then I heard all the particulars of the shabby trick that had been dealt you. I determined not to enrich myself still further with the money which you had been led to expect would be yours. I'd plenty of money without Aunt Chaloner's, not that she was any aunt of mine; none of you are blood relations to me for that matter. I thought it all over for I wanted to make it up to you somehow. But there was nothing I could do, except rent the Court.

"I ran down to see if I fancied the old place, and I saw something else I fancied. Will you give me Merry for my wife, sir?" The lighthearted voice vibrated with earnest entreaty.

"Our Merry! our little girl!" blankly repeated the good vicar, still stunned by the extraordinary news just poured into his ears.

"But

"Merry!" shrieked Fanny Chaloner. you haven't seen Gwen!" With the lightning quickness of a woman she comprehended that a proposal of marriage was being made, which the vicar did not.

When Christmastide came, it was kept right royally under the roof of the old Court, now the home of Philip Chaloner-to give him his legitimate name and the sweet English wife fate had brought him all the way from New Zealand to win. It had been easy enough for the "stranger genelmun at The Jarge" to prove his identity with the wealthy run-holder, who did not need Aunt Chaloner's money, and the next step was a wedding, of which all Studley approved cordially.

"After all," said Fanny Chaloner, with the contented sigh of a successful mother, whose

daughters do not hang on hand, "it was but fair that Merry should have it made up to her for Aunt Chaloner's spitefulness, and so the dear girl has stepped right into the old lady's shoes, as Mrs. Chaloner of Studley Court. And what a thing it has been for us all! There's dear old Leonard a made man; he never took to schoolmastering, and the life of a sheep-farmer will exactly suit him." For Philip Chaloner had arranged to send Leonard out to be manager of his property in the Colony. "And then, think of Philip's generosity in insisting upon undertaking the expenses of Tony's education at school and college both. It's more than the boy deserves after Petering an innocent man whose name was Philip!"

"And what a real comfort to have dear Gwen

back again at home in the parish, which was certainly going to pieces in Merry's hands!" chimed in Ermy. "Between you and me, mother, although Philip is a perfect fool about his wife, and thinks her absolutely perfect, Merry has no talent whatever for organising. Septimus quite agrees with me."

It was true enough. Mrs. Philip Chaloner's only conspicuous talent was that which consisted in "loving much."

And some day, when all the generalship and managings of this little world of ours come to an end for lack of further need of them, even the Ermys and the Gwens may recognise that love, and love only, is the " fulfilling of the law." Meantime, Philip Chaloner for one has found it out already.

THE

THE terrible massacres of last year, still unatoned, turned all eyes towards Asia Minor. International questions, if they result in nothing better, at least make us rub up our geography, and none of us are now quite so hazy concerning the whereabouts of Erzeroum, Marash, Zeitun, and other places, as we were some twelve months back. I think not one out of every dozen men you meet in the street ever heard of these places till the recent horrors in Armenia began. There is only a single town in Asia Minor the name of which strikes familiar to the ear. That is Tarsus. And, again, the man in the street is able to tell you the Apostle Paul was born there, and so begins and ends his knowledge of the place. Tarsus is a dejected, ramshackle

town to-day, with squalid houses, squalid people, everything wretched, and dirty, and uninviting. Yet it is one of the oldest cities in the world; it has played a great part on the world's stage; kings have lived in it, have been murdered in it; mighty battles have been fought about its walls; and famous teachers have gone from its schools.

All that was thousands of years ago. It decayed and sank almost out of existence, and now it is in a state of second childhood. Some twelve or fourteen thousand people-Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and Syrians inhabit the rude-built. houses, erected out of the débris of the town's ancient, marble-faced mansions. They seem to idle most of their life away. Few Europeans ever

visit Tarsus. It is out of the track of the tourist, at the mouth of the Gulf of Iskanderun, twelve miles from the straggling, drowsy, little seaport of Mersina. Stuck by itself, as it were, in a corner of the Mediterranean, and on a road leading to nowhere, the place is little more than a name to the rest of the world. But it is full of quaint interest, not only on account of its departed greatness, but because it presents a striking, characteristic picture of what life is in the centre of the Ottoman Empire, hardly touched by the finger of civilisation-a curious old town, encircled by a broad band of thick green verdure, under the shadow of the rugged, belting Taurus Mountains, and surrounded with traces of the Hellenic domination, temples of marble, richly carved, but

OLD CLOCK TOWER.

now lying prostrate, and the ornate pillars broken into bits to build a hut for some ease-loving, yet fanatical Turk.

A railway runs from Mersina to Tarsus, and beyond to Adana. It is a poor affair, and when the engine shrieks its wildest, and all steam is on to keep up express speed, the travelling is at the breakneck rate of some fifteen miles an hour. And you never know exactly when the train is going to start. It starts by Turkish time-that is, every man resets his watch at sundown. But Turkish time varies according to individual opinion, and you only break the mainspring of your watch if you attempt to keep up with its vagaries. When you do mount into one of the roomy carriages, you are sure to be pestered by an officious Turkish soldier, in trousers three sizes too big for him, and a jacket that will not meet

across the chest, in order that you may give him baksheesh. He demands your name, and if you reply, "Mind your own business," down goes "Mind-your-own-business" in Arabic, as one of the foreign passengers. Mersina is a military centre, and the trains are constantly crowded with ill-clad, unshaven soldiers being taken up to Adana, and thence sent to the interior to do work of which the outer world hears but little. It is the same at Tarsus. I found the soldiers, however, although curious and wondering, always ready to show me the way when I desired to visit any spot. The inhabitants, on the other hand, eyed me with fierceness and contempt. They spat on the ground as I passed, loth to breathe air contaminated by a dog of a Christian.

Tarsus stands in the centre of a great patch of woodland, nurtured by the waters of the river Cydnus, while the rest of the country round looks barren and bare. There is a slight eminence rising on one side of the town, affording a wide, expansive view, including the residence of the French Consul and the school kept by Dr. Christie, a Scotsman from America, who, with his wife, trains Armenian and Greek boys to be missionaries amongst their own people. Some of the lads speak excellent English, and one I found knew his Shakespeare much better than I know mine. The boys, especially the Armenians, are subjected to all sorts of indignities when they go through the streets. But they never dare retaliate. An old scholar whom I met at Dr. Christie's house had been sentenced to a year's imprisonment, and actually underwent four months of it, the authorities being sure of his seditious propensities, because a copy of Shelley's 6 Revolt of Islam' was discovered in his house. The green which encircles Tarsus is exceedingly lovely, the trees-oak and orange, ash and lemon-growing in luxuriant negligence. The soil is fertile, and in the few gardens are figs and grapes, peaches, pomegranates, mulberries, and almonds. There is a shaky old cannon on this eminence, but it would be dangerous

attempting to fire it. Some excavations have been made, and reveal traces of a magnificent building, supposed to be the place where Antony first rested his eyes on the captivating Cleopatra. Far away rises a range of red hills, and the eye can just distinguish the cleft in the rocks known as the Gates of Cilicia, through which many a devastating army has marched to do battle with the kings of Tarsus.

But little endeavour has been made to lay out roads, and no endeavour at all to lay out streets. They have just grown by themselves. Accordingly, they are nothing but a mass of crooked lanes, with sharp turnings leading only into backyards, higgledy-piggledy paths, with huge boulders forming a causeway, the houses less ornamental than a barn, and not a third so substantial-everywhere slovenliness, with only occasional glimpses of the picturesque, Oriental life, bright, varied,

and ever-changing, with which I have been so often fascinated in other Eastern towns.

The bazaar is the place where men congregate, where business is transacted, where all the news is told, and repeated, and told again. There is a scene of constant animation in this part of the town: camels laden with grain, and donkeys laden with brushwood, ambling through the narrow, covered-in ways; the shops, like dark cupboards, on each side, with gorgeous drapery hung for barter, and the merchants squatting on tiny mats, musing with philosophic complacency, or chatting with their neighbours. Several times through the day the voice of the Moslem priest can be heard from the minaret, calling on the faithful to pray, and the Mohammedans pull on their shoes and hurry to the Mosque for five minutes' prayer.

A

Brown, hairy-chested peasants, down from the mountains, step on one side, and eye rather fearfully the Frank as he wanders past. The women, in their long loose gowns, should they happen to wear no veil, pull their hoods in front of their faces in the presence of a stranger. green-turbaned fanatic scowls. There is the shouting of the camel-drivers, of men selling fruit, of bright-eyed, velvetycheeked boys in charge of herds of asses; the clang of brass cups in the hand of the sweet drink-seller. It is a strange fantastic throng, not clad in the warm-tinted, gorgeous raiment of the Arabs in Africa, but still bright and varied enough, contrasted with the dull, sombre clothes of folks at home.

Tarsus to-day gives itself up to petty merchandise, for only a vestige remains of its former greatness. Who founded the city nobody knows. Probably it was the Assyrians. We know

it was one of the Asiatic cities conquered by Rameses III., and that was three or four thousand years ago. There is a very curious structure, so majestic and so strong that it can defy the wear of ages to the end of time, that interested me greatly. It was probably built as a tomb, but whether Sardanapalus, the Assyrian, is buried there neither I nor those more learned than I can say, for there is no evidence of the fact, but only tradition to vouch for it. There, however, it stands, as enduring as the pyramids, and no one can say who built it. The Moslems call it the Dunuk tash or overturned rock, because there is a legend it was once the palace of a prince of Tarsus who offended the prophet, and therefore the building was turned over and he was buried beneath it. How strong the place is may be gathered when I say the walls are twenty-one feet thick. The Armenians secured the privilege from the Turkish authorities to bury their dead in this place. But the privilege was taken away from them because it was alleged they used it as a meeting ground to

discuss rebellion against the government. Therefore the gates are now securely barricaded, and I confess I pleaded in vain to be allowed to enter and inspect so curious a monument. Failing this, one morning I did climb one edge of the wall to the summit and was able to get a partial peep into the enclosure. There are two cubical masses of conglomerate as high as the walls-one rather larger than the other-inside. At one end are two walls running parallel with the main wall, and there are traces of them having been joined by an arch. Altogether it is very curious, and one's curiosity is all the greater because of the general ignorance concerning it. Wild orange-trees grow beneath the shelter of the tomb, and when evening falls nightingales sing from their branches. The foot of a stray traveller now and then clambers over the débris, and, sitting alone on a huge boulder, he ponders over the past.

TOMB OF SARDANAPALUS.

What sort of place Tarsus was under the Assyrian kings there is no record. What we know of it when it came under the power of the Persians is dim and shadowy. We do, however, know that Alexander the Great was some time at Tarsus during the invasion of Persia. It was while bathing in the cold waters of the Cydnus that he caught a fever that almost laid him on his bier. The falls of the Cydnus close to the town -they were not falling when I was there-is another spot full of interest. The rush of the waters has worn ways through the rocks, and in the masses still left standing chambers have been cut for bathers. It was truly delightful on a genially warm morning to jump across crevices from rock to rock, to climb down a precipitous side edged with dark rich moss, and seek shelter beneath a mass of beautiful maiden-hair fern in one of the chambers where the stone seat is, and the shelf still little the worse for wear. These rooms are said to have been cut out of the rock by the direction of Alexander the Great, who dearly