the vulture. His cheeks were hollow, the arms,
crossed on his breast, were long and fleshless.
Yet in that skeleton form there was a something
which conveyed the idea of a serpent's suppleness
and strength; and as the hungry, watchful
eyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled
impulsively with that inward warning of danger
which is conveyed to man, as to inferior
animals, in the very aspect of the creatures that
sting or devour. At my movement the man
inclined his head in the submissive Eastern
salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly,
humbly, fawningly, to judge by his tone and his
gesture.

I moved yet farther away from him with
loathing, and now the human thought flashed
upon me: was I in truth exposed to no danger
in trusting myself to the mercy of the weird and
remorseless master of those hirelings from the
East?— seven men in number, two at least of
them formidably armed, and docile as
bloodhounds to the hunter, who has only to show
them their prey. But fear of man like myself is
not my weakness; where fear found its way to
my heart it was through the doubts or the
fancies in which man like myself disappeared in
the attributes, dark and unknown, which we give
to a fiend or a spectre. And, perhaps, if I could
have paused to analyse my own sensations, the
very presence of this escort— creatures of flesh
and blood— lessened the dread of my
incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front
and defy those seven eastern slaves— I, haughty
son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races
because he fears no odds— than have seen again
on the walls of my threshold the luminous,
bodyless Shadow! Besides; Lilian— Lilian! for
one chance of saving her life, however wild and
chimerical that chance might be, I would have
shrunk not a foot from the march of an army.

Thus reassured, and thus resolved, I advanced,
with a smile of disdain, to meet Margrave and
his veiled companion, as they now came from the
moonlit copse.

"Well," I said to him, with an irony that
unconsciously mimicked his own, "have you
taken advice with your nurse? I assume that
the dark form by your side is that of Ayesha!"

The woman looked at me from her sable veil,
with her steadfast, solemn eyes, and said, in
English, though with a foreign accent, "The
nurse, born in Asia, is but wise through her
love; the pale son of Europe is wise through his
art. The nurse says ' Forbear!' Do you say '
Adventure?'"

"Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his
foot on the ground, " I take no counsel from
either; it is for me to resolve, for you to obey,
and for him to aid. Night is come, and we
waste it; move on."

The woman made no reply, nor did I. He
took my arm and walked back to the hut. The
barbaric escort followed. When we reached the
door of the building, Margrave said a few words
to the woman and to the litter-bearers. They
entered the hut with us. Margrave pointed
out to the woman his coffer; to the men, the
fuel stowed in the outhouse. Both were
borne away and placed within the litter.
Meanwhile, I took from the table, on which it was
carelessly thrown, the light hatchet that I
habitually carried with me in my rambles.

"Do you think that you need that idle
weapon?" said Margrave. " Do you fear the good
faith of my swarthy attendants?"

"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is
to sever the gold from the quartz in which we
may find it embedded, or to clear, as this shovel,
which will also be needed, from the slight soil
above it, the ore that the mine in the mountain
flings forth, as the sea casts its waifs on the
sands."

"Give me your hand, fellow-labourer!" said
Margrave, joyfully. " Ah, there is no faltering
terror in this pulse. I was not mistaken in the
Man. What rests, but the Place and the Hour?
—I shall live— I shall live!"

M.D. AND M.A.D.

THE mad-doctors have been making an
auto-da-fé of themselves in connexion with the
shameful scandal of a Commission of Lunacy,
out of which the public, after a long drench of
evidence— lasting nearly as many days as the
Deluge— has got only an opinion anything but
flattering either to the victim of the inquiry
or to its promoter; some pity for the one, no
very frantic admiration for the other, and a
strong conviction that the case for the
imbecility of the mad-doctors has been at any rate
made out. The sooner those gentlemen, as
witnesses to the wits of their neighbours, are put
under strong restraint, the better for us all.

Let us suppose that there is flying somewhere
in space, a Beneficent Uncle, who was not eager
to have a fat nephew declared carrion. Let us
say that where the carcase of that nephew was,
the eagles gathered themselves together in a
battle royal for the benediction of the repast.
Let us say that the victim— all combatants,
except the Disinterested Uncle, being now gorged
with the meat that was on him— has been
suffered to pick up his bones and depart. And let
us make an end of the whole matter by saying,
Let him go, and let us know no more of nephew
or of uncle. But the mad-doctors are not to be
so lightly shaken off. Again and again they
reappear, claiming to be considered authorities.

One eminent authority cries Sound! Another
equally eminent cries Rotten! In this wretched
case, as in almost every other, the eminent authority
who happens to be consulted on one side
gives his evidence in strong support of the side
that has retained him: while the eminent authority
consulted on the other side is ready to
meet with point-blank contradiction, the
opinions of his eminent brother. Dr. Forbes
Winslow was to have been retained for the
defence, and a witness states that he went to
his house for that purpose; but, seeing the chief
accuser in the doctor's waiting-room, he knew
it was of no use to apply there. Dr. Winslow
said in evidence, that, in preparing himself to