huge overhanging eyebrow; on that, a gaunt, halfnaked Kirghiz, with a skin cap as big as a coal-scuttle, riding on a cow-no uncommon sight in this primitive region, where the natives, rather than walk, will ride upon anything from a dromedary to a drum-stick. Under the scorching heat of mid-day, the very cockroaches seem to crawl more languidly than usual; and the lean, piratical-looking dogs coiled up in front of the houses are too much "done up" to bark, but merely show their teeth as a matter of form.

At last we emerge from the labyrinth upon a vast open space, bounded on the left by the long, low, manywindowed frontage of the police-station, and extending on the right down to the very brink of the marshy, almost dry moat that girdles the wall of the fortress. To the left of the police-station, behind one of those little reed palisades so common in Central Asia, appears a kind of abridged parody of it—equally long, low, and many windowed, but barely a third of its size, and entered (like Virgil's Hades) by two doors. My guide goes straight to the further of the two, enters, and, unlocking a small door on the left with the air of Louis Quatorze showing his palace, mòtions me in.

At the first glance, I am involuntarily reminded of those wonderful descriptions of the weird old chambers in the Inns of Court, which haunted my dreams for many a night after my first reading of "Pickwick." And, certainly, the two "interiors have much in common. The small, narrow, low-browed window, overgrown with cobwebs and dirt; the cross-beamed

roof, which, flecked with lingering patches of whitewash, looks unpleasantly like the ribs of a giant skeleton ; the bare walls, the dingy floor, the rough deal table littered with bundles of dusty papers-are all identical; even the damp, chilly, back-kitchen atmosphere is there likewise.

The impression deepens as I glance along the shelves, piled high with worm-eaten military order books, with official documents written years ago, with huge metal cases painted with the half-effaced inscription: "Reports of the 8th Turkestan Battalion for 1868 —1869-1870—&c." Everything has an ancient, remote, uncanny look, an atmosphere heavy with forgotten events and with men who have been long dead. such surroundings, I should hardly be surprised to see the lid of the huge padlocked chest in the farther corner raise itself slowly, with a long creaking groan, and reveal a skeleton in the mouldering remnants of a bridal dress, pointing its bony finger in hideous mockery.

Amid

But my stout conductor, whose mental organisation is as thick as the skull that encases it, troubles himself with no such fantasies. To his practical mind, this Bluebeard's Chamber is simply a place where he has to give out books and to receive money; and he proceeds to business forthwith. Drawing a second key from his capacious pocket, he unlocks a small armoire standing in a recess on the farther side of the room, and, waving his hand over the contents as if he were blessing them, bids me "look through them and help myself."

And a most miscellaneous collection they are.

Several dozens of old magazines, bound all wrong, and, in some cases, carrying their spirit of brotherhood so far as to exchange covers; two or three tattered volumes of Pushkin, the champion poet of Russia; a number of well-thumbed romances by native celebrities of the present day, including (as I am glad to notice) those of the Russian Thackeray, Ivan Turgenieff, whose towering figure and lion-like grey head seem to look down upon me as I read. There, too, are a few fragments of Alexander Dumas, père-that wonderful man who served up impossibility with such piquant French sauce as to make it taste like Truth, and gracefully bowed Fact and History out of his way wherever he went. Then come translations of various Anglo-Saxon worthies -jolly Captain Marryat and picturesque Fenimore Cooper, photographic Dickens and earnest Charles Reade-old friends with a new face, receiving honour thousands of miles from home, in a strange language, and among a people whom they never saw nor shall see.

There is, however, one drawback to this admirable collection-not a single work appears to be complete. The first volume of one, the second of another, the last of a third, are nowhere to be found, the library being apparently composed (like that of the chief hotel at Beyrout) of odd volumes dropped by passing travellers. It suddenly flashes upon me that here is a new torture, unaccountably overlooked by the Inquisition,—to shut a man up in an awfully dull place, with an intensely interesting book of which the last volume is missing! Having chosen a few books at haphazard, I am

N

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