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AN EVENING STROLL ground.' As he spoke he pointed first to a prostrate door jamb, then to a moulded plinth, then to themul-lion of some vanished window, set upright in the earth : and rude crosses cut in them, and inscriptions in the Armenian character, which traversed their original ornamentation, showed me that they were used as grave-stones, and that the dead were resting under them—the ended trouble of life hiding under its ended pride. Had a poet like Gray been there, he might have written a new elegy, but the scene at this hour seemed to be an elegy in itself. Far away in the west the fading sunset gleamed over a darkening sea-like plain, flanked on either side by lines of con-verging mountains. A faint breeze came sighing out of the solitude, and passed on to rustle the palm-fronds of the mysterious city. A feeling of sadness rose up out of the earth, with hints of remote races, and the splendours of forgotten history ; and as we walked back over the twilight fields, and through the alleys now black with evening, and found ourselves in the lamplight of Mrs. Falkland's drawing-room, the spirit of the place kept sounding in my mind's ear, faint and plaintive like the voice of an iEolian harp. After tea Scotty made his appearance, and I agreed to take him into my service. Our dinner that evening was as pleasant as on the night pre-ceding; and my sense of the contrast of things was more keen than ever when a dull tramping was heard in the street outside, and the sound of camel

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