daybreak. Still something can be done: those
Russians are such grand impetuous fellows; it
is only needful to know how to manage them
to do what you like. There is always some one
near them who can turn them round one finger,
and who will take a small bribe for a great
service.

Perhaps Mr. Heavyside's English sense  of
right and wrong revolts at this idea of bribing
a man's trusted servant to betray him. If so,
he is requested to leave that part of the
transaction to the poor but honest person. He
need know nothing about it. Indeed, he is
assured that as all Russians take bribes, and
every employer is aware of the fact, they merely
form a part of the legitimate and recognised
perquisites of place. They are the commission
elsewhere paid openly upon sales. The banker
will find all these arguments perfectly familiar
to his shabby visitor. Perhaps he still dislikes
the whole affair, and feels doubtful about it, but
he is ultimately put off his guard. The poor
but honest person will cheerfully admit that
the Moldo-Wallachian boyards are not to be
trusted; but a Russian prince, a Dooyoumalsky,
ah! The honest man clacks his thumb-nail
against his teeth, to signify by that expressive
pantomime how profound are his
convictions as to the integrity and chivalrous
nature of that lofty and immaculate class. The
Polish nobleman here steps in. He has a national
and deep hatred to all Russians. He contemptuously
assures his master that Dooyoumalsky,
when in command at Wilna, ordered the Polish
nobleman's mother and seven lovely sisters to
be all scourged to death; that nineteen other
illustrious and lovely persons of his family were
simultaneously shot, and their immense estates
confiscated. Yet still this bloodthirsty
miscreant is rich. The money he wrung out of
tortured and prostrate Poland would make him
rich; and, besides, there is the corn: they can
go and see it. Mr. Heavyside has never been
in the interior; suppose they go to-morrow.
The Polish nobleman will make all the arrangements.
A note to Mr. Ledger, the chief clerk,
is all that will be necessary, and they may be
back in three days. There is some excellent
bustard-shooting on the road, and, perhaps, if
they are fortunate, they may buy some valuable
fox and wolf skins for winter pelisses. So
here is a tempting health-giving sort of business
started up full grown in the middle of
a single night.

Perhaps the banker yields to these
arguments. The proposed profits are enormous;
no money will be wanted till the crops are
shipped and insured. All this has been clearly
explained to him. Beside, like most Englishmen,
he has a spice of adventure and love of
travel in him, or he would not be trying to
gather nuggets on the banks of the Danube at
his time of life.

Sure enough, then, the next day away they
go, at daybreak, long before Mr. Ledger is
stirring. There is no business that Mr. Ledger
cannot do while his chief is away, and perhaps
it might be better for the business if his chief
did not come back again, seeing that Mr. Ledger
has grown grey in the country, and married
a wife there, and that he knows already much
of the grievous experience his employer will
hereafter acquire. Little does Mr. Heavyside
think, as he speeds pleasantly through the
morning air, with four gay little ponies drawing
a light calèche at twelve miles an hour over the
steppe, how patiently he has been fished for,
and how cleverly he has been caught. From
time to time on the road he will meet shaggy,
unkempt, loose-limbed peasant-boys on rough
steppe galloways, without bridle or saddle, but
always riding furiously. Those lads are
messengers, going to and fro between the prince
and his wife. She is a stout, inert, witless
sort of lady, but she will be found quite
prepared for Mr. Heavyside. Boys and ponies
cost nothing in these countries, and she is sure
to be well provided with instructions.

Mr. Ledger, as he walks down to his office,
by-and-by, may also note the tall towering
figure of the Circassian standing upon the
house-top over his master's bedroom at the
hotel. He is shading his eyes, naturally
wonderfully clear and keen, with his hand, in order
that he may see distinctly as far as possible.
He is watching the road taken by the banker,
and immediately the light calèche is quite out
of sight, and he has observed that one of the
pony messengers has got a wide start of it by
a short cut through some woods on the right,
he stalks down with a stately stride to report
progress to my prince. That great boyard
then pats the brave, sharp-eyed fellow on the
head, like the faithful favourite sort of mastiff
that he is; and my prince having flirted,
according to his kind, with a travelling French
actress staying at the hotel, smokes a few
cigarettes with some local grandees who wait
upon him, steps again into his smart travelling-
carriage, and is off to have a little talk with the
Irish major from Belfast, presently staying at
Ibraïla.

AN OUT-OF-THE-WAY CORNER.

WHY I have taken it into my head to seek
an Out-of-the-way Corner in the country for a
temporary respite from London life, is, I fancy,
nobody's particular business. It may have been
to relax from burdensome duties, or to complete
an epic poem, or to write a tragedy, or to solve a
geometrical problem, or to perfect a piece of
mechanism, or it may have been to do anything
else; what is that to anybody? I sought
retirement for a while, and found the prettiest, the
most rural, and the quietest little nook in the
beautiful county of Starshire, only a few miles
from the metropolis, and not far from a branch
railway station. Away from noise and hurry,
here I have pitched my tent; in more businesslike
words, here I have hired a small cottage of
three rooms. My landlord lives in an attached
cot of two rooms, so curiously annexed by an