turning to depart, when my eye catches a Swedish newspaper pasted on the wall, and the first thing I read

is

"Lord Erlistoun,

En kärleks Historie,

Af förf. till ‘John Halifax.””

This is all that time and dust have spared; but it suffices to call up a very pleasant remembrance of a gentle, kindly face, and cordially outstretched hand, which once greeted me at the door of an English country house, in days which now seem like the memory of a previous existence. Such recollections are worth reviving in the heart of this Asiatic desert; and as the door closes behind me, I freely forgive the library all its deficiencies.

CHAPTER XX.

EASTWARD HO!

WEEKS have come and gone, and, little by little, the summer is beginning to wear away. The periodical shrinking of the Syr-Daria (coinciding with the rise of the Oxus) has left broad patches of mud festering in the sun where, a fortnight ago, I stood ankle-deep in water. The destroying heat of June and early July is gradually softening into a mild, genial warmth, which makes it a treat to be out of doors. The mosquitoes which have haunted us so long are beginning to disappear-though replaced by another scourge almost equally intolerable-a plague of flies of every standing and denomination, from the adventurous youngster who pops into your glass just as you are going to drink, or into your eye just as you are beginning to write, up to the huge barytoned bluebottle who keeps blundering into your face with the perseverance of a bore who cannot understand that he is not wanted.

My bivouac in the courtyard is becoming chillier and chillier, and of late I have taken to sleeping indoors altogether. Old Morozoff, my host, tries to frighten me by shaking his great shaggy head with prophecies of terrible cold to come, and quotes with a chuckle the favourite

native legend, that there was no winter here twenty years ago, but that the Russian conquerors have brought their own cold along with them. If so, they must have brought a bountiful supply. The Syr-Daria freezes for three months (from the end of November to the beginning of March) and the Lower Oxus itself for one ; while the cold Siberian winds make themselves terribly felt on the great central plain even as early as autumn. I myself, when I returned across the Kara-Koum in September, had one foot completely frozen; and this is by no means an exceptional case, though I may perhaps have been more liable to it from my previous loss of blood.

Colonel Goloff, the late commander of the Kazalinsk column, has resumed his duties as District Governor, my old friend Vereshtchagin having been transferred to Fort Perovski; and, once or twice every week, I amuse myself by strolling down to the Colonel's meek little house (only distinguishable by the sentry at its door) and watching him dispensing justice. The room itself is a picture. Low roof, brick floor, whitewashed walls; two small windows looking out upon a tiny garden, which has run sadly to waste during its master's absence; the usual big couch along the wall, the usual rickety chairs and deal table, littered with papers of every kind; picture of patron saint in one corner, painting of "John the Baptist's head in a charger" in the other; photographs of various friends and one or two of the Grand Dukes, unframed and fly-spotted; and in the midst of all, the bulky figure, broad full

face, and heavy cuirassier moustache, of the Governor himself, with the inevitable glass of tea and sliced lemon at his elbow.

Nor are the visitors a less curious study than the room itself. Now it is a lean, sunburned, Cossack soldier in a dingy white tunic, charged with some. outrageous breach of the peace, and meeting all questions with a stolid "I know nothing about it, your Excellency I was drunk." Then bursts in a gaunt, robber-like Kirghiz, burning for vengeance upon the miscreant who has appropriated a whole foot of his land, and astonished that the Governor should take it so quietly. After him comes a well-disciplined clerk from the bureau, with papers which have just arrived from Tashkent; and then an overseer to complain that his workmen are shirking their duty-no uncommon offence in these parts. Or perhaps, once in a way, two or three officers drop in to hold a council over the despatch of a steamer with fresh stores for the troops holding the Delta of the Oxus, and the preparation of winter clothing for them; or, it may be, to cut a few threadbare jokes upon the Khivan Khan's chance of paying his indemnity-a payment likely to be strictly exacted in this accurate age, when the world's motto appears to be: "Let no man owe you anything, save to hate one another."

But, all this time, my own prospects are growing blacker and blacker. Khiva has already become all but hopeless, and Tashkent now begins to appear equally so. M's cheering letter has borne no fruit.

The Russian officers evidently regard my extradition to Orenburg as a mere question of time. My Tartar, having by this time lost all confidence in my lucky star, and all hope of visiting his brother at Samarcand, begins to turn his thoughts homeward, and to talk querulously of "the good place that he left at Orenburg to come out into the desert for nothing."

Once, indeed, I fairly consider the game lost-on the morning of the 27th July, when a tall, gaunt, hard-featured man in uniform stalks into my room, and, presenting me with a formidable-looking official document signed by the Governor of Tashkent, begs me to read it, and to note on the margin that I have done so. I obey, and find it to the effect that, my passport being an English one, I cannot be allowed to proceed; and that, should General Kaufmann's decision be unfavourable to me, I am to quit the province forthwith. This I at first regard as a final blow; but, on re-reading it, I perceive that it can be temporised with, and temporise with it accordingly.

Nevertheless, I can no longer disguise even from myself that my cause is as good as lost. It is evident to me (though, not having seen an English paper for three months, I, of course, know nothing as yet of the publication of my name by the Daily Telegraph on the 31st May) that some adverse circumstance has nullified the effect of my recommendations; and although I still continue to write and post my weekly despatches to the Daily Telegraph (under cover to my agents in Russia, in order to avoid suspicion) it is with the feeling of a condemned criminal meting out his few remaining days of life.