—maiden has engaged the affections of two
gentlemen, Messieurs Kerim and Abdallah, who
might easily pass for genuine Persians, if they
did not more closely resemble Ethiopian
serenaders, and who (fortunately for the
progress of the drama) can only express themselves
in pantomime.

Timour, at first disposed to order the whole
party to the furtress, resolves upon a more
chivalrous mode of arranging the difficulty, and
directs that a combat on horseback shall determine
the lady's choice. Hereupon, the champions
engage, when Kerim, in spite of the
obvious intention of destiny and the dramatist,
gets a heavy fall, and, but for the prompt
politeness of Abdallah, who lays himself open to a
tremendous stab (between the arm and side),
and immediately falls prostrate, would certainly
have lost all chance of a Succashin or any other
spouse. As it is, the magnanimous Timour
awards him the palm of victory, and invites him
to the inevitable furtress, to receive his lovely
prize.

The great scene is now approaching. Treachery
is at work within the very furtress itself. Zorilda
has fraternised with that ancient humbug, Oglou,
who has actually released Ajib, and brought him
to his mother. The meeting is less demonstrative
than might have been expected, Ajib,
especially, taking the matter as coolly as if
they had only parted since breakfast. Zorilda,
however, does her best to keep up appear-
ances:

"My cheeild! my treasured one! my golden-
'aired butterfly! Hast thou sorrowed for thy
parent?"

"A (ay) mother," responds the insect
apostrophised. " Deeply A deeply have I sorrored
and in my lonely dungeon wept o'er days of
'appiness gone for ever gone but you? Have
you grieved for your little Ajib, and has my
dear old cheeild'ood's nurse, Fati—- Nay, 'old
—here's kind old Oglou!"

Will it be credited that this venerable person
has found time, since we parted with him, to
commit two new acts of treachery? Aware that
Timour must sooner or later discover Ajib's
escape, he has made a clean breast of it to
his son, and, that effected, hastens to the
furtress to place Ajib once more out of harm's
way.

What is to be done with him? For Timour,
whose character stands out more and more
beautifully in this atmosphere of treachery, is
already on his way to the furtress for the
purpose of "upbraiding" Zorilda. After trying
three doors, a cupboard, and a drawer, and finding
them all locked, Ajib is made to lie on the
sofa, where, covered with a large mantle, and
sat upon by his mother, he must be, if not safe,
at least warm.

Enter Timour and two halberdiers.

"Geeard the door. On your lives, let none
pass."

Throughout the trying interview which follows,
nothing can exceed the quiet gentlemanly
bearing of this much misapprehended man.

Looking, with much delicacy, in every direction
except the only one in which she can possibly
be, Timour at length demands:

"Where is the princess? Speak."

Her attendant intimates that she is on the
sofa, overcome with sorrow.

Timour regrets the necessity for interrupting
her meditations, but—

"She sleeps," says Oglou, at a venture.

"Then she must wake," is the stern reply.

There is no help for it, so the princess rises
with a start.

"How! Timour here? And at this hour?"
(It is about midnight.) " Whence this intrusion?"

Timour the Tartar merely glances at the fact
that the furtress is his habitual residence, and,
for persons troubled in mind, twelve o'clock at
night a convenient hour for entering into their
grievances. He then proceeds to upbraid her,
and, in his earnestness, is about to sit down
upon Ajib. Happily, Zorilda interposes in time,
imploring Timour to imprison, to torture, to
kill her, to do anything, in fact, except be
seated!

A little astonished, but confiding as ever, the
noble Tartar allows himself to be enticed away
from the sofa, while the indefatigable Oglou,
smuggling the boy to the window, lets him down
with the girdle of his dressing-gown. This (of
course) breaks, but, as the distance cannot well
exceed five feet, and the young gentleman is
received with a congratulating cheer (in the Jurgian
tongue) by a party whose heads are just visible
on a level with the window-sill, there is every
reason to believe that he falls, and falls softly,
into the hands of sympathising friends.

Meanwhile, Timour—totally indifferent to
the Jurgian demonstration just mentioned—
continues his conversation with Zorilda, and,
with all the frankness of a noble nature,
confesses, that, though he feels himself to be
"hated, nay, aborred," it is his irrevocable
determination to pursue his suit.

"Munster!" is the ungracious reply. " My
Jurgians will protect their princess."

Thinking, however, that it might be prudent
not to drive even the gentle Timour to
extremities, the lady temporises. The succession
must, in any case, be secured to Ajib.

Timour ponders.

"I must have solitude and reflection," says
he.

And, for this, the opportune closing of the
act affords a fitting interval.

What might have been the effect upon the
destinies of Persia and the world had Timour's
cogitations been uninterrupted, we can only
conjecture. A gloomy change has come over
his affairs. Zorilda's threat was not an idle
boast. There has arrived from Jurgia a power-
ful reinforcement—ten in number—comprising,
no doubt, every arm of the service, since no two
are dressed alike, and Timour—the noble, trustful,
affectionate Timour—is beleaguered in that
very furtress, imprisonment within whose frowning
walls was the severest measure the kind-hearted