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A DEMOCRACY SAVED FOR FIVE SHILLINGS 157 self, ' Bah, my friends ! ' he exclaimed, ' you have for-gotten one thing ; you have forgotten the expense of travelling there and back. The double fare by the diligence will come to full five shillings. Do you expect me to pay that out of my own private pocket ? Never. I go for the sake of my party, and my party must pay it for me.' At this the other patriots looked extremely blank. 1 'Very well,' said Mr. Piérides calmly, ' if you will not pay for me I re-main, and my country must take the consequences.' Awed by so much firmness, the others at last gave in. Mr. Piérides was given the sum required. He went for the day to Larnaca. In his absence the measure was carried ; and he thus stands alone in the annals of the popular cause as a hero who en-gaged to save, and who did save, a democracy, for no other reward than the payment of his own expenses. Stories take a colouring from the scenes amongst which one hears them. These I heard as, for a second time at twilight, we were driving home from the spurs of Pentedactylon and were speeding across the plain towards the walls and minarets of Nicosia. The last time I had done this I had been listening to the romance of the past. Now, with equal enter-tainment, I had been listening to the comedy of the present ; and. this, though many of its details were modern and prosaic enough, and indeed called to mind the paragraphs of our own newspapers, was yet for the most part so naïve and so whimsical that,

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