any essential light on the history of the mysterious Circassian.

'I told you about the soldiers we brought from Bassorah, who had been in Arabia seven years and who had never been paid. They were so glad to leave Bassorah that they made little noise about their money, and the general promised them that they would get it in Jeddah. But when they heard the story of the Circassian, how he telegraphed to Sultan Hamid and got money for us, they said it was a shame that he did n't get money for them too: they had gone seven years without a para. And when the general of Jeddah told them that they would be paid in Constantinople they made much noise. They would not believe that the general had no money, and they brought the Circassian into it again and said he must telegraph to Sultan Hamid. They could not understand! It was only when the general threatened to keep them in Yemen and send the Leopard of the Sea home without them that they were quiet.

'We were sorry to leave the Circassian in Jeddah, but we were glad to start away at last. It is the country of the Prophet, but, vallah! it is a dirty country! We came quickly enough up to Egypt. The Leopard of the Sea walked more slowly than ever, because the hole in the machine for making the water of the sea sweet spoiled the water, and the bad water spoiled the machine of the ship. Still, we went forward all the time. And in Egypt, thanks to God, there was no telegram. And our hearts became light when we came once more into the White Sea, where it seemed cold to us after Yemen. The captain said he would stop nowhere till we got to the Dardanelles, lest he should find a telegram. But our calamities were not quite done. It was because of the soldiers again. After they smelled the air of their country once

more and ate bread every day, something came to them. They went to the captain one morning and said, "We wish to go to Beirout." The captain told them he could n't go to Beirout. He had orders to go to Constantinople. What did they wish in Beirout? They merely answered, "We wish to go to Beirout." And in the end they went to Beirout. What could the captain do? They were a thousand, with guns, and we were forty or fifty; and they were very angry. They said they were fools ever to have left Arabia without their money and they were tired of promises.

'So we went to Beirout. The soldiers told the captain that he need not mix in their business: they had thought of a thing to do. Only let him wait till they were ready to go. And half of them staid on the steamer to see that he did not go away and leave them. The other half went on shore and asked where was the governor's palace. Every one was much surprised to see six hundred ragged soldiers going to the governor's palace, and many followed them. When they reached the palace the soldiers asked for the governor. A servant told them that the governor was not there. "Never mind," said the soldiers, "we are six hundred, and on the ship there are six hundred more, and we will find the governor." Then they were told to wait a little and the governor would come. And the governor did come. For I suppose he was not pleased that there should be. scandal in the city. Also it happened that he had very few soldiers of his own, because there was fighting in the Lebanon. He received the six hundred very politely, and gave them coffee and cigarettes, and asked them what he could do for them. And they told him their story, and what they had suffered, and how many of them had died, and that they had never been paid, and they said their hearts were broken and

they wished their money. The governor said they were right, and it was hard for a man to go seven years without being paid; still, he was not their general; how could he pay them? "You can telegraph to Sultan Hamid," they said, "and he will send you the money. We shall wait here till the answer comes." And they waited, the six hundred of them.

"They made no noise and frightened no one, but they sat there on the floor with their rifles on their knees, and smoked cigarettes with the soldiers of the governor-who pitied them and said they would never drive them away. And by and by the governor came back and said he had heard from Sultan Hamid, who said it was a sin that his children should be treated in that way, and they should have their money. And then he called a scribe, and they made an account, and the soldiers took the money. It came to eight or nine thousand pounds. And a mistake was made by the scribe, and some soldiers got too little, and the governor gave them what was owed. And the soldiers said they were glad they had not been paid in seven years to get so much

now.

"The captain was not pleased by this work, for it put us back many days and he thought Sultan Hamid might be angry if he got too many telegrams asking for money. However, the captain was pleased and we were all pleased to get away from Beirout with no more trouble. But of course the soldiers were the most pleased, who smelled their own country again after seven years, and who had their money at last. They sat on the deck all day counting it, and singing, and some had pipes which they played, and those who were Laz or Kurds or Albanians danced the dances of their country. But before long the sea began to dance, and then they stopped. And by

and-by, the wind blew so hard they could not stay on deck. We did not mind, because we were accustomed; and the wind was from the south, which helped us. But they were not accustomed, and they were very sick. The ship was so small and they were so many that downstairs there was no room to turn without stepping on a sick soldier. And water poured down from above, and they all got soaked as they lay on the floor. If we had not burned up all the sofas and tables and chairs in the sea of Bassorah there never would have been beds enough for them. And at last there came a night when even the captain and I began to think. The ship went this side, the ship went the other side, waves rolled back and forth in the cabin, everywhere there were cracks and macks till we thought the Leopard of the Sea would crack in two. By God, it was a night of much fear. But what is there more than kismet? It was our kismet that that also should pass.'

I saw it was time to open the shutter of my camera, for the lights between the minarets of Yeni Jami had grouped themselves into the image of a ship. It seemed an odd coincidence. When I sat down again on my stone, after pinching the bulb, the lieutenant of the Leopard of the Sea continued to stare abstractedly at the little bark of gold sailing in the dark sky.

'Who shall escape his destiny?' he uttered at length. 'For six months we had had no peace. We had lacked bread. We had suffered storms. We had sat on the floor of the sea. We had been burned and frozen. We had been robbed. We had been worse off than beggars. We had been unjustly treated. We had eaten all manner of dung. But no harm had come to us, thanks to God! And the morning after that night was like a morning of paradise. The sun was bright and warm. The sea was

blue, blue. There was no wind. There were hardly any waves, for we were among the islands again. We could see on them the flowers of almond trees and peach trees. The soldiers said they heard the birds. They had forgotten all their calamities, the soldiers, and were sitting on the deck again, counting their gold, singing, playing pipes, dancing. And in front of us we could see the mountains of the Dardanelles.'

He sighed, telling the beads of the string he carried as he went over the memory in his mind.

"There was only one thing. The Leopard of the Sea sat very low in the water. Why not, after the rivers that came in the night before? I thought nothing of it. We pumped, but we did n't mind because we were so near home. I saw, though, that the captain was thinking. I asked him if he was afraid they would make trouble for us about the telegrams and the money. Sultan Hamid often did things for reasons that were not apparent, and he never forgot.

666

"God love you!" said the captain. "I think nothing of that. But do you remember those windows we sold in Bassorah? Those are what make me think. We needed bread then, it is true, and no one can blame us. Also we nailed the tin on very tightly. But in the storm I kept thinking of them. And you see the bow now is lower than the stern. Those blind eyes are under water."

"They will still see the way to Stamboul," I told him. "There is plenty of coal behind the tin."

downstairs and see if there is much water about."

'I looked, and I could n't find any to speak of. I went down to the engine room, without telling them why I came, and there was very little. What they were thinking of down there was the machine. It had become more and more rotten, from the bad water, till it would hardly work. The door of our house was open in front of us, but when we would have run to it like boys, the Leopard of the Sea could only walk, slowly, slowly, like an old man.'

He had left out enormously, and I realized in the end that I had small notion what manner of man he was himself. But I am bound to say that he did make vivid, as we squatted there on our neighborly stones, the final case of the Leopard of the Sea.

'Why should I make much speech? The old man never found the door of his house. It was because of his blind eyes. But until the last moment we hoped we might get to the Dardanelles. The sea became more and more quiet. It was more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, like blue jewels with light shining through them. A great purple island stood not far away, and white houses were on it. And sails played like children on the floor of the sea. It was so beautiful and so still that the soldiers were not frightened. They noticed that the ship settled in the water, but the captain told them it was nothing. He asked me what we should do whether we should let off steam to keep the machine from blowing up. We finally decided not to. We might reach land after all, and steamers and ships were all about us. While if we let off steam and signaled for

'He laughed.

""I would not mind so much if we had not burned the boats. Just look

and the soldiers might make another calamity; for they were very simple. "Akh! if they only had n't made us go to Beirout!" the captain said. "We

A YEAR ago I received a printed letter from America which contained a problem in ethics, and the sender proposed that I should answer it. He added that he had sent the same conundrum to many notable people and that he hoped that by collating the replies he would arrive at an absolute answer. I have unfortunately lost the printed letter, but it ran something like this:

'A is a good boy, B is a bad boy. When A and B are together, B breaks a window notwithstanding A's remonstrance. The teacher finds the broken window and suspects that A knows who broke it. Should A tell? And should the teacher bring pressure to bear on A to make him tell?'

My correspondent supposed there was an answer that was always true; he was in search of the absolute.

There is, I suppose, nothing that men have searched for, hoped for, tried for, from the beginning as they have for the

absolute. They have dreamed of an absolute happiness; they have imagined an absolute ethic as a means to that happiness.

Very early man began it by making proverbs and wise sayings. These are some of them common to most peoples:

Do not put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

Marry in haste and repent at leisure.
Well begun is half done.
Whatever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might.

A burnt child dreads the fire.
It is better to be lucky than wise.

These proverbs rejoiced him for a time. They seemed so true. He could see that in experience they were sometimes true, and he closed his eyes to the fact that the exceptions were as numerous as the examples. He hoped that he was finding absolute truth, that he was reducing life to formulæ so that he need not think about anything, and the idea made him happy.

Happy the wooing that's not long in doing.

Fine before seven, wet before eleven.
Point de zéle.

Familiarity breeds contempt.
Fortune's best gift is wisdom.

All his truths were thus contradicted by other truths. For unfortunately these second proverbs were as good as the former. They were just as true, had just as many examples and just as many exceptions. It was exasperating to be thus driven out of his complacency, and early man was angry. 'Neither of them is completely true,' he declared, 'therefore both are false. They are false because they are both exaggerations. The truth lies between. A curse on both your houses; "in medio tutissimus ibo.""

That was a saying that filled him with delight because of its evident soundness and balance. "That is matured wisdom,' he thought: 'avoid all extremes; go slowly and carefully and safely.' It was in fact the beginning of philosophy, though unfortunately not the end of it.

It was, however, the end of every early man who believed and practiced it.

Fighting was common in those days, and there were only two kinds of early man who survived at all. One kind was he who went into battle determined to conquer or to die; the second was he who was equally determined, if he could not conquer, to run away. The philosopher who went to battle half-heartedly had it in him neither to conquer nor run away, but was always killed and was generally eaten afterwards. So that fixed ethics led a precarious existence in those stirring times. Still they did not die, and ever with

increasing civilization they increased as well.

Then they took the form of religions taught by priests.

They came to him in one form or another and said, 'You have not found the absolute truth? No, of course you have not. You could not. Absolute truth cannot be found. It can only be revealed. It has been so revealed to us. We know the absolute. Do what we tell you and all will be well.'

And man at first willingly resigned himself. It is hard work thinking, therefore let the priests do it for me. It seems an endless labor, saving myself; let the priests save me. Now responsibility is off my shoulders I shall be happy and free.'

But he soon found that he was neither. He had sold himself into a spiritual bondage, and to his surprise this did not make him happy. However hard he tried, there was something in his soul that would not accept this state of things. There was a criticizing spirit that would not accept as truth what it was told, a spirit of independence that kept whispering in his ear, 'You alone are a true judge of what is true for you. No one can judge for you because no one can be you. Can't you feel that a great deal of what they tell you is n't true?'

But this was not all. It was not merely, or even mainly, that what faiths told him and priests bade him and ethics directed was not true, for sometimes it was true; it was that it was as bad when it was true as when it was untrue.

For the same inner voice he feared so much would not be still, would not submit. It wanted the mastery of itself, not that others should have it. "Think,' it said aloud. 'Say you do well. If others bade you, to whom the profit? Not to you. Obedience profiteth nothing. That which profiteth a