of the world, in the vastness of time, to have found her in at the last than at midnight in the Rue Lépelletier! Who was she? What was she? -this phantom which pursued him? He wondered restlessly, as he did often in lonely moments like these, while he sat looking down the Bosphorus as the lights gleamed in the distance among the cypress and orange groves of the city of the Moslem, and the far-off cry of the Imaum wailed deep and mournful, through the silence, chanting the evening prayer of the Faithful.

As he sat thus he did not notice or hear a man approach him on horseback, riding slowly along the sea-shore, unarmed, and lightly chanting, à demi voix, a Southern barcarolle air-a handsome, careless, graceful Greek, whose saddle reveries seemed of the lightest and brightest as he swayed a bunch of Turkish lilies idly in his hand. His roan mare's hoofs-a little Barbary-sank noiselessly in the sands; and Erceldoune did not lift his head;-he sat motionless under the black shadow of the eypress, resting on his rifle, with the starlight falling fitfully on the white folds of the Arab cloak and the Rembrandt darkness of his face, as his head was bent down and his eyes gazed seaward. The rider came nearer and nearer, the hoofs still noiseless on the loose soil; and the hummed song on his lips broke louder, till he sang the words clearly and mellowly on the air, in the mischievous profound truth of Dufresny's chanson:

"Deux époux dit un grand oracle,

Tout d'un coup deviendront heureux,
Quand deux époux, pas un miracle,
Pourront devinir veufs touts deux!"

The voice fell on Erceldoune's ear, rich, harmonious, soft as a woman's contralto-the voice that had given the word to "kill the Border Eagle!" He started to his feet, flinging back his white burnous; in the silvery silent Eastern night he saw the man whom he had first seen in the gaslight of the Café Minuit, whom he had last seen in the gloom of the Carpathian pass.

They met once more!—the assassin, and he whom he had left for murdered in the forest ravine-and they knew each other at a glance: no instinct so rapid and so unerring as the instinct of a foe. With an oath that rang over the silent seas, Erceldoune sprang forward, as lions spring, and covered him with his rifle; swift as an unconsidered thought, Conrad Phaulcon wheeled and dashed his spurs into his mare's flanks, which sprang off at a headlong gallop a hundred paces in advance by that second's start; in an instant Erceldoune caught at the loose rein of his English horse, flung himself into saddle at a leap, and tore down the Bosphorus shore, his rifle levelled, the bridle between his teeth, the Monarch racing at full speed. They were in chase-the pursuer and the pursued.

"Halt!-or you are a dead man."

The return challenge rolled through the night, pealed back by the echoes of the Bosphorus;-the sole answer of the Greek was to dash the rowels again into his roan's sides, and tear on without other thought than flight, tasting all the long bitterness of death with every second that the beat of the gallop grew closer behind him, with every moment that

the shriek of the bullet might whistle down on the wind and the shot pierce his heart from the hand he had once thought picked bare to the bone by the vultures, and buried safe in Moldavian snows. The blood coursed like fire through Erceldoune's veins, every muscle in him strained like those of a gallant hound in chase; he longed, as the hound longs, to be at the throat of his flying foe; he had a mortal debt to pay, and a deadly wrath to pay it with; the life of his murderer lay at his mercy, and he panted-with brute thirst, if you will-to take it, and trample it out on the sands in a just and pitiless vengeance.

Yet he did not fire.

All that was bold and true and knightly in him refused to let him do as he had been done by ;-forbade him to shoot down an unarmed man. The hoofs now thundering loud on barren rock, now scattering in clouds the loosened sand, now trampling out the fragrance from acres of wild myrtles and basilica, he rode on in close hot chase, the bridle held in the grip of his teeth, his rifle covering his assassin, while Conrad PhaulIcon fled for his life. A single shot, from an aim which never missed, and the coward would be slain as he would have slain, would die the death that he would have dealt; a single ball sent screaming, with its shrill hiss, crash through his spine, and he would drop from the saddle dead as a dog. The Greek knew that as well as the man who held his life in his hands, to take it when he would; and the sweat of his deathagony gathered in great drops on his brow, the horror of his death-blow quivered sickening through all his limbs, while the throb of the gallop grew closer and closer behind him, and as he turned in his saddle onceonce only-he saw the stretching head of the Monarch within fifty paces, the face of Erceldoune stern and dark as though cast in bronze, and the long lean barrel of steel glistening bright in the moonlight, lifted to deal him the fate he had dealt.

Onward-while the chant of the Muezzin grew fainter and fainter, and the lighted mosques of Stamboul were left distant behind; onwardthrough the still, hot Eastern night, lit with a million stars, and all on fire with the glittering fire-flies; onward-down the beach of the luminous phosphor-radiant sea, along stretches of yellow sand, under beetling brows of granite, over rocky strips foam-splashed with spray, through fields of sweet wild lavender, and Cashmere roses blowing rich with dew, and tangled withes of tamarind tendrils, and myrtle thickets sloping to the shore, and netted screens of drooping orange-boughs, all white with bloom; onward they swept-pursuer and pursued-in a race for life and death.

It was one of those hours which are supreme in the lives of men, and which, in this age, ten thousand lives die out from earth, never having even known or tasted.

The Greek was before him; now and again they well-nigh touched, as by a length, and the foam from his horse's bit was flung on the steaming flanks of the mare he chased; now and again the dull thud of the hoofs thundered almost side by side as they scattered sand and surf, or trampled out the odorous dews from trodden roses. His enemy's life lay in the hollow of his hand; he saw the womanish beauty of Phaulcon's face, all white and ghastly with a craven terror, turned backward one instant in the light of the moon; his blood coursed like fire, a

fierce delight, a just and deadly vengeance heated his senses and throbbed in his veins. He panted for his foe's life, as he hunted him on through the hot Asian night, as the lion in chase may pant for the tiger's; all the passions in him, rare to rise, but unappeasable when roused, were at their darkest, and the creed which chained them down, and forbade him, even in a righteous vengeance, to fire on a man unarmed, served but to make each fibre strain, each nerve quiver, with the fiercer thirst to race his quarry down, and-side to side, man to man-hurl him from his saddle and fling him to earth, held under his heel as he would have held the venomous coil of a snake, prisoned and powerless, till its poisonous breath was trodden out on the sands.

They rode in hard and fearful chase, as men ride only for life and death; the rein gripped in his teeth, his rifle levelled straight, the Monarch racing like the wind, guided by the pressure of his knees and the brief mots d'ordre of the desert, while the hunted Greek fled on in headlong flight.

The surf flashed its salt spray in their eyes as they splashed through the sea-pools girth-deep in water; the fire-flies flew with a rush from bud and bough, as they crashed through the wild pomegranates; the whitewinged gulls rose up with a shrill scream in the light of the moon, as the tramp of the horses rang out on the rocks, or scattered the sands in a whirling cloud. There was a wild delight for the bold Border blood in the breathless ride through the lustrous night, in the intoxication of the odours trampled out from trodden roses and crushed citrons, in the fierce vivid sense of living, as he swept down the lonely shore by the side of the luminous starlit sea, hunting his murderer into his lair!-the wolf in his own snow steppes, the boar in his own pine-forests, the tiger in the hot Indian night, the lion in the palm plains of Libya; he had hunted them all in their turn, but he had known no chase like that he rode now, when his quarry was not brute, but man.

The snorting nostrils of the Monarch touched the flanks of the straining Barbary, the hot steam of the one blent with the blood-flaked foam of the other. They raced together almost side by side, dashing down a precipitous ridge of shore entangled with a riotous growth of aloes and oleander; Erceldoune saw his assassin was making for some known and near lair, as a fox hard pressed heads for covert, and he thundered the chesnut on in hotter and hotter pursuit, till the steel of the rifle glittered close in Count Conrad's sight as he turned again, his face livid with terror, and the breath of the horse that was hunting him down scorching and noxious against his cheek, like the breath of the bloodhound on the murderer's. There were barely six paces between them, crashing headlong in that race of death down the sloping ridge, through the cactus thickets; as he turned backward, with that dastard gesture of pitiful despair, they looked on one another by the white light of the moon, and the womanish fairness of the Greek's face was ghastly with a coward's prayer, and the dark bronze of his pursuer's was set in deadly menace, in fierce lust of blood. Phaulcon knew why, with that lean tube flashing in the starlight, he was still spared; he knew, too, that once side by side in fair struggle, he would be hurled from his saddle, and crushed with iron strength under a just vengeance, till all life was dead, as pitilessly as righteously as men crush out the snake whose fangs have bit them.

Idalia.

And the pursuit gained on him; the head of the Monarch was stretched over the flanks of his young roan mare. Erceldoune rode him down, dashing through the wilderness of vegetation, with the surf of the sea thundering loudly below, and the fierce thirst of the bloodhound upon him, a loathing hate, a riotous joy seething through his veins. The horses ran now, nothing between them and the billows lashing almost neck by neck below but a span's breadth of rock and a frail fence of cactus. One strain more and he would be beside him, the wild bloodshot eyes of the mare were blinded with the foam flung off the Monarch's curb, and his own arm was stretched to seize his assassin in the steel grip of his grasp, and hurl him out to the waters boiling beneath, or tread him down on the rock under his feet, while he wrung out his confession in the terror of death. He leaned from his saddle; his hand all but grasped his enemy in a hold Conrad Phaulcon could no more have shaken off than he could have shaken the grip of an eagle, or the fangs of a lion; he was even with him, and had run him to earth in that wild night race down the Asian shore. But suddenly, with a swerve and a plunge as the spurs tore her reeking flanks-the mare was lifted to a mad leap, a wall of marble gleaming white in the starlight, and rising straight in face of the sea; she cleared it with a bound of agony, and the dull crash that smote the silence as she fell, told the price with which she paid that gallant effort of brute life.

A fierce oath broke from Erceldoune's lips and rang hoarse in fury over the seas. As he put the Monarch at the leap, he reared and refused it; a second was already lost, an eternity in value to him whom he pursued if the mare had still pace and stay to let him reap its worth in flight. His face grew dark as night-all that was worst in the Border blood was roused and at its height; he wheeled the hunter and rode him back, then turned again and put him full gallop at the barrier, nursing him for the leap; the marble wall gleamed white before them, clothed with the foliage of fig and tamarisk trees; he lifted the Monarch in the air, cleared the structure, and came crash on the yielding bed of wild geranium that broke the sheer descent.

On the ground lay the Barbary mare, panting and quivering on her side; the saddle was empty.

A darkness like the night was upon Erceldoune's face as he saw that his enemy had escaped him-a darkness closely and terribly like crime on his soul.

Wolf, and boar, and lion, he had chased them all to their lair, and brought them down, now and again, a thousand times over, by the surety of his shot, by the victory of his strength! His secret assassin hunted and run to earth, with his life at his mercy and given up to his will through the whole length of that race down the Bosphorus waters, had outstripped his speed and had baffled his vengeance, let loose again on the world with his name unconfessed, with his brute guilt the unavenged, lost once more in the solitudes of night, in the vastness of power Asia! A second more, and his hand would have been at the throat of this man; he would have hurled under his feet and beneath his dainty silken beauty of the coward who, thief and murderer in one, had shot him down in the Moldavian pass, and would have crushed the truth from his throat and the craven life from his limbs under the iron grind

of his heel, giving back vengeance as great as his wrongs. A second more, and the traitor who had laughed with him in good fellowship in the Parisian café, and butchered him in cold blood in the Danubian solitudes, would have answered to him for that night's work. Now the Barbary mare lay riderless at his feet, and before him, around him, stretching dim in the distance, were thickets of myrtle, labyrinths of cactus, dense groups of oleander, of palm, of pomegranate, where his quarry had headed for a known covert, or had found one by chance, and from which it was as hopeless to draw him again as to unearth a fox once outrun the hound's scent, or pursue a stag that had once swam the loch.

A curse broke again from Erceldoune's lips furious and bitter, that the distant wail of the Imaum seemed to mock and fling back, as he rode the Monarch headlong down into the wilderness of shrubs and flowers, trampling the boughs asunder, crushing luscious fruit and odorous blossom under the horse's hoofs, searching beneath the shadows and under the tangled aisles of foliage for the dastard who must be refuged there; one dusky glimpse of his crouching form, one flash of the starlight on his hidden face, and he would have fired on him now without a moment's check; his blood was up, his passions were let loose, and the Greek might as well have sought for leniency from the jaws of a panther as for mercy from Erceldoune then, had he ridden him down in his cover and dragged him out in the still Eastern night.

Evil if you will-granted-but very human.

He rode furiously, hither and thither, through the thickest glades and where the shadows were deepest, searching for that to which he had no clue, in chase of a quarry which every turn he missed, every clump of shrubs he passed, every screen of aloes whose spines his horse refused to breast, might hide and shelter from his vengeance. Nothing met his search but the frightened birds that flew from their sleep among the piles of blossom, and the shrill hiss of the cicala scared from its bed in the grasses. In the leafy recesses, and the winding aisles, of those hanging gardens overlooking the Bosphorus a hundred men might have been secreted, and defied the search of one who was a stranger to the ground, and was cheated at every turn by the fantastic shadows of the moonlight and the palms. His foe had escaped him; before the dawn broke he might have slipped down to the shore and be far out at sea beyond the Dardanelles; or if the gardens were the known lair for which he had purposely headed in the race along the beach, he would be safe beyond pursuit wherever he made his den.

Erceldoune dropped the bridle on the chesnut's neck, and let him take his own pace; a terrible bitterness of baffled effort, of foiled wrath, was on him a passion, like a weapon which recoils, hits the one who holds it hard. This man's life had been in his hands, and had escaped him!and the unexpiated vengeance rolled back on his own heart, fierce, heavy, dark, almost as though it were twin crime with what it had hitherto failed to punish. Erceldoune's law was Mosaic law; to hold back from its administration was to hold back from justice in his creed, and to be denied power to execute it was to be denied his right. This womanish coward, a night assassin, only of the viler stamp because of the gentler breed, went through the world unbranded and unpunished, while honest men died by the score of cold and famine in the snows of Caucasus and