sought refuge in his old favourites, in Aristophanes, Cervantes, Rabelais, Shakespeare.

It was in 1865 that Mérimée first Saw Bismarck at Biarritz; and from this time forward it is easy to read, under the half-mocking "If M. Bismarck allows us" which occurs so frequently in his correspondence, his real conviction that the destinies of Europe had passed from Napoleon's into a stronger hand. When the crisis came and war was imminent, he was at least free from any delusion as to the skill of the French generals or the efficiency of the French army, though at the same time he was quite ignorant of the enemy's strength, considering the Prussians to be a mere rough beer-drinking militia. The disasters which followed broke through his apathy, and called forth all his loyalty to the Empress, together with a patriotism he had long affected to deny. Strange that almost the last act in the life of this confirmed cynic should have been a desperate mission to Thiers (with whom he had never been on very friendly terms) the object of which was to beg that statesman to form a Government and save the dynasty. But Thiers, whether or not he already knew the event of Sedan (for there is a dispute as to dates), politely and firmly declined, professing himself powerless to help the Empress; and so poor Mérimée, sick in body and mind, dragged himself back to Cannes, and died, at the moment when that order of things, to which all his interests were attached, itself vanished away.

He was a remarkable man, but hardly an amiable one. Considered in literature alone, his combination

of vast learning with the lightest and most graceful art of fiction gives him an exceptional place; while his habit of writing just what he liked to write, without regard to money or to popularity, makes him an ideal of literary independence. But circumstances set Mérimée on a more spacious stage than falls to the lot of most men of letters. He was an amateur of many parts; and if to his credit it must be put down that he was full of the Gallic spirit without the common Gallic failings of boastfulness, ostentation, and vanity, that he was above corruption and uninfluenced by fear or favour, that he was loyal to persons and to such principles as he allowed himself to hold; it is on the other hand impossible to deny the futility of a character which was solely critical and destructive, the character of a man whose chief object is to avoid doing what is absurd, and who therefore ends in doing nothing. The purely negative view of life, a falling through the air [to employ his own illustration] which is pleasant enough until you reach the bottom," can produce no great results. Indeed Mérimée's famous criticism about "the child, the statesman, and the madman" inevitably makes us think that had he himself possessed a little of the child he would have been happier, a little of the madman he would have been more effectual. As it is, we leave his life with a feeling of regret that so much talent and so many opportunities were marred by so fatal a dilettantism. Always, as it seems, within reach of supreme excellence, he halts and says to himself, "Is it worth while?" And the answer unfortunately is always, "No."

30

Only

It

"It is naught, mother! Hussan and Husayn once more." was a woman's voice also from the roof where the Indian corn was drying to a richer gold in the sunlight; but it was a voice which had hardly come as yet to its full roundness, in other words to its perfect womanliness.

"Hussan and Husayn! What makes them be for ever fighting like young cocks?"

There was an instant's pause; then the voice from the roof came piously, "God knows!"

Miriam herself might have been less modest as to her knowledge. For the case stood thus. It was a corner house between two sequestered alleys which intersected each other at right angles, and there had been a lingering lover, expectant of some recognition, in each alley. Now, if half-a-handful of golden corn be thrown as a guerdon over the parapet just at the angle, and if the lovers, hot-blooded young sparks, spring forward incontinently to pick up the precious grains and meet, then- !

"Indeed, mother, they were very like cocks," remarked Miriam gravely,

a

as she stepped daintily down the narrow mud-stairs again to resume her spinning in the courtyard. So the whirr of the wheel joined the hum of the quern, and both formed background to her sudden girlish laugh at the recollection of what she had seen through that peephole in the parapet.

The whole thing was a play to this Osmanzai girl, who, for all her seclusion, knew perfectly well that she was the beauty of the village, and that many another spark besides Hussan and Husayn would be only too glad of half a handful of Indian corn to pick up out of the gutter. But these two being the most expert swimmers in that quaint bare colony of huts set on a loose shale slope with the wild wicked rush of the Indus at its foot, were, perhaps, the most interesting. That is to say, if you excepted Khâsia, the big soft shepherd who came down sometimes from the grassy, fir-crowned slopes higher up the gorge, the Maha-bân or Great Forest Hills beyond which lay the Black Moun

tain.

A strange wild country is this of the Indus gorge just as the great river begins to think of the level plains in front of it. A strange wild people are those who live in that close-packed, flat-roofed village upon the shale slope, where a footfall sends the thin leaves of mica-schist slithering away into the rushing river. There is no stranger country, no wilder people. For this is Sitâna, the place of refuge for every Mohammedan fanatic who finds the more

civilised plains too hot even for his fiery faith; Sitâna, the dwelling-place of the Syyuds who, since the days of their great leader Ahmad, have spent their lives in killing every hell-doomed infidel they can get hold of in cold blood. And as the pigs of Hindus live on the other side of the rushing river, it follows that those who kill must also swim, since there is no bridge far or near. That was why Hussan and Husayn, and many another of their sort, with carefully oiled thews and sinews of bronze, would go down the shale slope on dark nights and slip softly into the ice-cold stream. Then, if there was a glint of moon, you could see them caught in the great upward curve of the mad current inshore, the two skin bladders that were slung under their armpits making it look as if six dark heads, not two, were drifting down and down, yet somehow drifting nearer and nearer to the other side where the pigs of Hindus were to be found. But even a glint of moon kept them, as a rule, talking of future nights, unless there was some cause to raise their recklessness to fever-height. For even that glint was enough to make the police watchers on the other, the English, side slip softly also into the stream and give chase. A strange, wild chase indeed it was; down and down in the dark till the blockade was run, or the venture abandoned for another night. Or stranger, wilder still, two men with knives met on the crest of the current and fought astrange, bloodless fight, hacking at the bladders because they were larger than the head, and the loss of them meant equally certain disablement. For there was nothing to be done in that wild stream if they were pricked but to cast them free and dive, to dive down and down past the current, to come up, please God! nearer home.

So, because of those watchers on the other side, the Sitâna swimmers could not start openly, nor from the same place. They went singly, silently, but the next morning ere the light came fully they would all be resting together on the steps of the little mosque; unless, indeed, some of them had not returned, were, in fact, to return no more. And the worshippers would be crowding round one or two, perhaps, while the others looked on enviously to hear how some traveller had been happened upon and done to death in the dark upon the undulating tract of low jungle on the other side. Then the worshippers going home would say casually in their houses: "Hussan killed his man last night; that makes him two ahead of Husayn. And Ahmad, the new one, hath another, so that brings him next to Husayn, who will need to work hard." And the women would gossip about it among themselves, and say that, of course, Miriam, the village-beauty, would choose the best swimmer when the time came for the curious choice which is allowed the Pathan girl among lovers whom she is supposed never to have seen. As yet, however, Miriam had only laughed, and thrown handfuls of yellow corn into the gutter, and said things to the aspirants' female relations which were sure to be repeated and make the rivalry run fiercer than ever. She did all this partly because of the big shepherd, partly because it was good for the faith to stimulate the young men's courage, but mostly because it amused her.

It was far, however, from having that effect on the Englishman who was responsible for the reputation of the district over the water. The more so because his name happened to be John Nicholson, and John Nicholson was not a man to allow any increase of crime within his borders without

knowing the reason why, and meting out punishment for the offence.

"What the deuce does it mean?" he said to the trembling native official in charge of that particular portion of the country which lay over against Sitâna. "There have been twenty murders this quarter against ten in the last; and I told you that for every man killed on our side there were to be two in Sitâna. What on earth are your swimmers about? If they are not so good as theirs, get others. Get something! There must be some fault on your part, or they wouldn't cock their tails up in this way. Remedy it; that is what you have got to do, so don't ask questions as to how it is to be done. you up, never fear."

I'll back

And then he took his telescope out, as he sate on his horse among the low bushes down by the rushing river, and prospected before he galloped off, neck or nothing, as his fashion was, to regain his camp thirty miles away, and write an urgent letter to Government detailing fully the measures which he intended to adopt for the repression of these scandalous crimes. But even a telescope did not show him Miriam's face as she sate spinning in the courtyard. And the rest of the long, low, flat-roofed village clinging to the shaly slope seemed very much at its usual; that is to say, the commonplace nest of as uncommon a set of religious scoundrels as could be found north or south. So he told himself that they must have been strengthened lately by a new contingent of fanatics from the plains, or that the approaching Mohurram-tide had raised their religious fervour to boiling-point. He allowed these reasons to himself, though he permitted none to his subordinate; but neither he nor the scared police-inspector dreamed of that laughing girl's face over the water which was the cause

of Hussan and Husayn's unusual activity. Still as he gathered his reins into his left hand he paused to give a more kindly look from under his dark eyebrows at the inspector's knockknees. "Why don't you get some of their swimmers?" he asked curtly. "I could." Doubtless he could; he was a man who got most things which he set himself to get. Yet even he might have failed here but for that girl's face, that handful of yellow Indian corn, and the fierce fight which followed for both between those two, Hussan and Husayn, who, as they were finally held back from each other by soothing, friendly hands, felt that the end was nigh if it had not already come. Brothers of the same belief, fellow-workers in that stream of Death, first and second alternately in the great race for men's lives, they knew that the time had come when they must be at each other's throat and settle which was to be best once and for all, which was to be best in Miriam's eyes. And then to their blind wrath came an authoritative voice, the voice of the holiest man there, the Syyud Ahmad, whom to disobey was to be accursed. "There is too much of this brawling," came the fiat. ""Tis a disgrace. Lo, Hussan, Husayn, here among the elders, swear before the Lord to have done with it. Swear that neither will raise hand again against a hand that fights for the same cause. Swear, both of you!" A chorus of approval came from the bystanders as those two, thus checked, stood glaring at each other. There were a few grains of the yellow Indian corn still in the gutter at their feet; and they looked at them as they swore never again to raise a hand against one fighting the good fight.

That same day, at dusk, Hussan and Husayn sate on the edge of the stream, their feet almost touching the water, their skin-bladders beside them,

their sharp knives hung in a sheath round their necks. Their bronze muscles shone even in the growing gloom; from head to foot they were lithe, strong, graceful in their very strength. They sate close to each other as they had often sate before, looking out over the tumbling rush of the wild current, to the other side of the river.

"Yea! Then I will go forth tonight as thou sayest, Hussan; and when I return equal, we will draw lots which is to take service on the other side."

"So be it, Husayn; I will wait for thee. And see, if thou couldst kill one of their swimmers, 'twere better. Then will it be easier to get his place. Hit up, brother, from the water; 'tis more deadly than the downward stroke."

And as they sate side by side, speaking quietly, almost indifferently, the evening call to prayer rang out over the wild wicked stream, and without another word they faced round from the river to the western hills. The parapet of Miriam's house stood out higher than the rest of the village. Perhaps they made it the Kaaba of their prayers, though they were orthodox enough in their genuflexions.

"Hussan and Husayn have been made, by the Pir Sahib, to swear they will not fight any more," said a girl, who giggled as she spoke, to Miriam when they were coming back with their water-pots from the river.

"Loh! there be plenty others who will," answered the round sweet voice that had not yet come to its full sweetness and roundness. "They are all like fighting-cocks, except the shepherds. Belike 'tis the sheep which make them peaceful, so they have time to laugh. Hussan and Husayn are ever breathless from some struggle. I would not be as they."

No. 433.-Vol. LXXIII.

"Lazybones!" retorted the giggler. Thy mother-in-law will need her tongue. Thy water-pot is but halffull even now."

"Still, it is heavy enough for my arms," replied the sweet voice indifferently, yet sharply, "and the

river is far." Then it added inconsequently: "But there are streams up in the hills that folk can guide to their doors. And the grass grows soft too. Here is nothing but stones; I hate them; they are so hard."

"And the big shepherd's mother is dead," put in another girl pertly; whereat the rest giggled louder than

ever.

Was it Hussan or Husayn who, three days afterwards, appeared suddenly before the District-officer in camp with a nicely written petition on a regulation sheet of English-made paper, requesting that he might be put on as a swimming patrol on the river opposite Sitâna in place of one who was supposed to have been killed or drowned? There is no need to know. No need to know which it was who won the toss when Husayn came back with a smile to say that, so far, they were quits and might begin a new game. Whichever it was, John Nicholson looked at the lean bronze thews and sinews approvingly, and then asked the one crucial question, 66 Can you ?"

The man smiled, a quick broad smile. "None better, Huzoor, on the Indus. There is one, over the water, who deems himself my match. God knows if he is."

John Nicholson, who had bent over his writing again, glanced up hastily. "So that is it. Here, Moonshee, write an order to the man at Khânpur to put this man on at once." He was back at his writing almost before the order was ended, and in the silence which followed under the white wings of the tent set wide to all the winds

D