scious; but in after life we are conscious of every atom of it. It is not a thing of course; it is a great nugget hit upon after years of barren toil; it is a light bursting from thick darkness; it is a well of water in a weary land; it is rest, so far as anything in this world is rest.
But to descend. I wondered how Madge and Jo would take this overturn of affairs: it was possible they might not by any means like it. I wronged them, and I am ashamed of my mistake even now. Next day Madge came alone: she flung her arms round my neck and said, "Miss Cowan, this was the one only thing wanting to make Jo and me perfectly happy." There was not a base fibre in her nature.
I have a son and daughter of my own. Perhaps I shall hardly be believed when I say that I do not know if they are dearer to me than Madge.
KISMET.
HALIL, the Pacha, skilled in many things,
In all the shrewd devices of the Franks,
Wherewith they grind the world as in a mill,
And blacken heaven with streams of smutty reek,
Rose in the morning with a heavy heart.
He with his proper hands could deftly make
The vaporing engine, give it heat of life,
And guide and govern its prodigious ways.
He too could shape the rueful iron tubes
That roar the death-bolts from their flaming jaws;
And other things of less or greater ill,
Accursed toys of the contriving Franks,
That turn the world of Islam upside down,
And shake the founded glories of the Faith.
He knew to speak the bitter western tongues
As though he drew them from his nurse's milk,
And growled and hissed their speeches at the Franks
Until they held him of their brotherhood:
With grief I say it!
Halil in the morn—
Being then advanced, not stricken, in his years—
Rose from his slumbers with a heart of lead,
And such a thirst within his vitals too
As one may suffer after having lain
In writhing spasms; or having scorned the Law,
And boozed and tippled with defiled ghiaours.
Amidst their shameless, bare-faced girls, till wine
Makes all the stars go reeling through the sky,
And earth to slide and stagger from the feet
By hellish magic. Halil called for drink,
To slake the fire within him; and he drank
As though he fed the monstrous appetite
