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AT THE GATE OF TEARS 161 • Meanwhile, in the single day that intervened, Γ underwent an experience entirely new and unexpected. I came down to breakfast, idly thinking over the stories which I have been just confiding to the reader. • Little did I know, whilst I was smiling at the comedy of the island, that I was going in an hour or two to be introduced to its tragedy. There was an old building in Nicosia which had once been a caravanserai, and which, some one told me, the Turks had used as a prison. I had several times been struck by its picturesque appearance, by its external arcades, by its deep and shadowy gate, and by its grey mouldering walls. Mrs. Falkland this morning greeted me with the pleasant intelligence that a certain Captain O'Flanagan, who occupied some post of authority, had promised to come at eleven o'clock to fetch us and show us over it, as it still was Government property. The Captain arrived duly—a tall, handsome Irishman, buoyant' and almost bounding with the proverbial spirits of his nation. I was somehow disappointed to learn from this sprightly gentleman that the building was a prison still, and that a body of police were quartered in it. The rascality of the natives, so far as I had heard of them, was, it is true, almost as idyllic as innocence ; so I had no fear of being introduced to an Oriental Newgate : but the sight of a sergeant and three or four subordinates, whom we found standing under the arch to receive us, quite dis- M

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