fastened but also locked to the stake with a padlock. The Turks had done this in order to prevent any crossing during the night. She stood up appalled. The cocks began to crow oftener at Lutibrod. The eastern sky gave all the indications of dawning. It would soon be day. She sighed in despair, and made a great effort to break either the chain or the lock. But that was far from possible. She raised herself up panting, and sighing hopelessly. All at once she stooped again-for the third time and seized the stake with both hands, now meaning to draw it out. The stake had stood there for years, driven down deep into the ground as if fastened with nails. She doubled, she trebled her force; her sinewy peasant arms stretched out; the muscles became of iron force; her bones cracked from straining and warm sweat began to drop down her cheeks. Panting, fatigued, as if she had sawed a whole cart of wood, she raised herself up, breathed once or twice and then clutched the stake again. Once again, with renewed efforts and greater zeal, she doubled up, going around it and pulling with all her might. Her old chest breathed aloud, her feet sank deep in the sand, and only after a terrible half-hour's struggle the hole became larger, and the stake moved. At last she pulled it out and dropped it on the sand. The chain rang dully in the silence.

Eleitza, gasping for breath, threw herself on the sand entirely exhausted. In a few minutes the boat with Eleitza, the child and the stake in it, floated triumphantly over the muddy waves.

V.

Right here the Iskre, coming out from the cañon, spreads itself widely and flows between level banks. The boat, which floated down the stream, disobedient to the oar so unskilfully

managed by the woman, soon passed its destination. Yet Eleitza's only anxiety was to prevent it from touching the same bank from which it had just started. Finally, a current drifted it to the other side and she landed, holding the child carefully in her arms. Losing no time she started up the hill toward the woods, which she soon entered. She proceeded toward the spot where she had met the insurgent. She had not gone in very far, when all at once she noticed a man's shadow moving among the trunks of the trees. She recognized him. It was he already standing before her.

"Good evening, young man; help yourself!" And, taking the bread out of the bag she handed it to him, realizing that, first of all, he must eat.

"Thank you, grandma," repeated the insurgent, deeply moved.

"Wait, put this on you!" and she handed him the overcoat with which she had covered the child. "I took it from the monastery without their knowing. God forgive me, I have sinned."

When starting from the monastery Eleitza took down from the fence this coat, thinking that it belonged to the servant. But now she was very much surprised to see that it was a monk's robe.

"It's all the same to me as long as it will keep me warm," said he, as he threw it over his frozen body. And they started. The insurgent walked on, eating at the same time. He quivered from the cold and limped painfully. He was about twenty years old, and dressed in a soldier's uniform. The woman did not question him, but gave him time to eat. She only talked to him in a low voice. But finally her curiosity overwhelmed her, and she asked him where he came from. He explained that he did not come from the top of the mountains, but from the plains. He had lost his companions in

the vineyards at Visletz the night before, and had walked from there to this spot with difficulty, and exposed to many perils; he had not eaten for two days and two nights, and the long journey had exhausted him; he was feverish, besides his feet were sore; now he was fleeing towards the mountains to find his companions and hide from his pursuers.

"My son, you cannot walk," she said to him; "give me your rifle, that will make walking easier for you."

And she took the rifle in her left hand, carrying the child with her right arm.

"Come, come, cheer up, young man." "But where am I going now, grandma?"

"What do you mean? To my house, of course."

"Is it possible, grandma? Thank you, you are a good woman!" answered the unhappy fellow, stooping down to kiss. the wrinkled hand that clutched the child.

"In this awful panic, if the people of the village find out they will burn me alive," continued the woman; "but how could I leave you here; you cannot run, and the Circassians, God punish them! will find you; there are a few of them in the village. But what made you fellows get out on such an adventure? This cursed kingdom could not be overthrown so easily. . . . They killed you like chickens. But you can't walk up the hill-"

So she took the rifle in her right hand and helped him up the hill with her left. Thus they continued their march through the woods. The sky in the east was growing brighter. The Tchelopeck cocks were crowing in earnest, the stars grew pale, it was dawn. They were at half an hour's distance from Tchelopeck, but walking fast. With this fellow's limping, however, it would take more than two hours. The woman grew anxious. If she had had wings,

she would have flown away with him. He, on his part, began also to look around.

"It has dawned, grandma," said he. "It is too bad," she sighed, "we shan't get there in time."

They walked a little further. Men's voices were heard from the other side. The woman stopped.

"This won't do, my lad, we must try something else. . . ."

"What else, grandma?" asked the young man, who looked up to this woman as his mother, his deliverer and his providence.

"Hide in the woods, and wait there till to-night. As soon as it gets dark I shall come to find you right here, and take you home with me."

And the young man agreed that this would be the wisest and best thing that they could do. The woman returned the rifle and bade him goodbye.

All at once Eleitza touched the child. "Oh," she cried out, "it is dead, its hands are icy!"

The insurgent stood stupefied before her. This unexpected grief of the woman astonished him. He wished to say something to console her, but he could not speak one word.

Now he saw that he had no reason to expect further help from this kind woman, whose heart was crushed by such a blow.

"Oh, my little dove!" She wept desperately as she looked at the face of the child in the first morning light.

The insurgent started toward the woods, deeply touched and utterly hopeless. But the weeping woman shouted to him.

"You must hide yourself well to-day. To-night be here again so that I can find you."

And she lost herself among the dark tree trunks, with the child on her bosom-or, rather, with the little dead body-she came, at daybreak, to the

ridge, where Tchelopeck stood. In her absent-mindedness she had not noticed that she had met no one on her way, though once she had heard men's voices.

VI.

On that June morning the sun shone glorious in the clear sky; it had been cloudy and rainy for the last few days. The long valley opening at Czar Shishman's rock was clad in luxuriant spring verdure, and bordering a glittering silvery belt of river, it charmed the sight. From here on the beautiful river glides gently towards Mezdra through a blooming valley, bounded on the south by picturesque, mountainous ridges, emptying itself from one valley into another, from one plain to another, until it finally reaches the waters of the blue Danube.

The sun was hardly more than a prick's distance (as the peasants say) above the horizon, when on the road from Vratza there appeared Turkish cavalry, followed by a big crowd marching on foot, in among the ryestalks. Both the cavalry and the infantry soon arrived at the Iskre, and there they stopped.

The infantry consisted of about three hundred men, armed with all kinds of fire-arms. In its front marched Turkish bashi-bazouks, while the rear, the larger part of it, was formed entirely of Circassians. After a few minutes' halt the cavalry moved to one side, thus making way for the Circassians to continue their march.

The bullet that laid Boteff dead on the ground, the day before, came from this very gang, commanded by the then distinguished Circassian chief, Djambalaz, a fierce and blood-thirsty highwayman. Mounted on his horse, Djambalaz halted right opposite the Tchelopeck woods, not far from the ancient church now in ruins. On the left of

the woods rose inaccessible jagged cliffs, while on the right, extended as far as the next bare ridges, the Tchelopeck wheat-fields and gardens. Right in the woods there was a sheepfold which could be seen very plainly through the trees. Now it was abandoned by its owner.

Presently the eyes of all were turned toward the woods, deep, deserted and quiet. It was there that the young insurgent was hiding himself. But these men had not come out purposely for him. What summoned them was the news from Vratza, that an hour before daybreak, a band of insurgents had gone down the mountains through the thicket, probably with the intention of crossing the Iskre, in order to find refuge in the Great Old Mountain.

This gang of pursuers, encouraged by the victory won the day before, was waiting for its leader's command. He had by this time dismounted his horse, and was discussing with some of the bashi-bazouks the situation and the manner of attack. Djambalaz was forty years old, tall, dark, with a full beard. He wore a fine Circassian uniform and was armed from top to toe. His savage countenance glowed under his long Circassian fur eap. Just then a rifle was fired from the sheepfold; the cliffs echoed and re-echoed.

""Tis the insurgents! the insurgents!" they shouted, looking toward the sheepfold, but all they could see was the roll of smoke, which the morning breeze soon unfurled and spread in among the branches of the trees. Immediately after this momentary surprise and stir on the part of the gang, there was a terrific discharge of musketry toward the woods, followed by frightful and continuous echoes, but out of the midst of the smoke from this discharge, voices were heard:

"Djambalaz is killed!" And indeed Djambalaz lay stretched out on the ground pierced right through his throat

by a bullet, and bleeding through his mouth.

He was shot dead by the one bullet that had come from the sheepfold.

At this shock a momentary panic seized the gang; it scattered in disorder and each man hid himself. The body of the chief was quickly removed. Even the cavalry disappeared, although no other shot was heard. From the long silence in the woods it was finally concluded that the insurgents had escaped. A band of the more daring Circassians, who had gotten rid of their fright, entered the woods through the Tchelopeck road and ransacked them thoroughly. All that they found was just one insurgent, who lay fatally wounded beside the trunk of an oak; he was about thirty years old; his face was covered with black whiskers and one of his legs was bare, wrapped around with cloth. The Circassians understood that the band of insurgents had fled to the mountains.

After the misfortune at the Voll, a party of Boteff's band, forty in number, under the command of Pera, wandered the whole night in the mountains; hungry, fatigued and dying for sleep, they entered at daybreak the Tchelopeck wood, and there all fell fast asleep, believing that its density would be a safe protection for them.

One of the bullets from the Circassians killed Pera, who without suspecting in the least the presence of the enemy, was dressing his wound by the oak tree. Deprived once more of a leader the insurgents dispersed and lost themselves up in the mountains. No other victim of the bullets

of the Circassians was found. However, when they reached the sheepfold there inside of it they found another corpse.

"A priest-traitor," they shouted, much surprised. There lay, stretched on the ground, a young man with his head pierced through. He was dressed in a monk's robe, but under it they saw his uniform stained with blood. His mouth, black from the gunpowder, showed that he had committed suicide with the pistol that lay not far from him, after he had killed Djambalaz with his rifle. Had he met before this his companions, it is unknown.

In spite of the custom on such occasions, the bashi-bazouks did not behead him in order to carry his head on a pole as a trophy of victory. The death of their leader they ascribed to this dead rebel. They were contented only to set fire to the sheepfold, where his corpse remained. It smoked till sunset while several of the same gang were engaged in exterminating a company of thirteen patriots who had come down in the afternoon from the mountains with the purpose of wading across the river.

Eleitza has died long since; but the half-dead child survived, and is now a sturdy fellow, whose name is Captain P. His grandmother, when relating to him these events, used to tell him that he owed his life not so much to the sinful prayer of the angry monk, as to the kindness which she herself was not able to do, though she did wish with all her heart to do it.

Ivan Vozoff.

I have sometimes wondered whether Bagehot has yet received his due fame. His patent of literary rank needs, indeed, no critic's countersign. His intimate friends, R. Hutton and Sir R. Giffen, have given admirable appreciations of his intellect and character. Sir M.E. Grant-Duff's address in a recent number of this Review shows how deeply he impressed a most competent eye-witness. There is a curious testimony to his interest for more distant readers. Some years ago the "Travelers' Insurance Company" of Hartford, Connecticut, set a precedent in advertising which authors might desire to see imitated in England. It published a complete edition of Bagehot's works, with its own name printed in the headlines throughout the volumes. It employed, too, a most competent editor. Mr. Forrest Morgan labored upon Bagehot's text with a zeal unsurpassable by any editor of a classic. Bagehot was either incapable of correcting proofs or calmly indifferent to errors; his pages bristle with misprints and grammatical solecisms; he mangled quotations so strangely that it is difficult to explain how he contrived to do it, and, as he rarely gave references, the task of identifying and correcting was very laborious. Mr. Morgan's zeal was equal to the difficulty, and a British author again owes to an American the first performance of a valuable service. No one can read the collected works without recognizing the singular versatility and vivacity of Bagehot's intellect. It is remarkable, says Bagehot, that Ricardo had already made a fortune and transformed the science of economics when he died at the age of fifty-one. Either performance might have been a sufficient life occupation. Bagehot died at precisely the same age, VOL. VIII. 440

LIVING AGE.

having been a successful man of business, an energetic journalist, and the author of treatises which made a mark upon political, economical and sociological speculation. Whatever the value of Bagehot's theories, his literary faculty was, of course, incomparably superior to Ricardo's. His books confirm what his friends tell us of his conversation. His mind was so alert, his. interest in life so keen and his powers of illustration so happy, that he could give freshness even to talk upon the British Constitution and liveliness to a discussion of the Bank reserve. could not, that is, be dull or commonplace, even on the driest or tritest of topics.

He

If, as I fancy, Bagehot scarcely received so ready a welcome as he deserved, one cause is obvious. Authors, if I may adopt a formula which he employed rather too often, may be divided into two classes, the sentimentalists and the cynics. There can be no doubt which is the most popular. Everybody likes "geniality" in print as in talk; and, of course, everybody is quite right in the main. Yet the genial author has the benefit of a packed jury. Each reader perhaps takes to himself the compliment paid to his species; what good fellows we all are! And then we are all pleased with every accession to the tacit conspiracy for keeping up comfortable illusions. The poor cynic can hardly get a fair hearing. It is surely desirable that somebody should look facts in the face, instead of taking credit for the equivocal virtue called "seeing the bright side of things." Things in general have a very dark side; and though the man who dwells upon it gets an unpleasant name, he may be doing us an important service. We always need good