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Glen was now no place for me. Looking back at my frame of mind, I can see nothing but exhilaration. Some great thing was about to befall two people whom I loved. I had no doubt of the virtue of the place. By devious paths I had brought back to it its old masters. It had whispered its secret to me, and I had repaid it. For the moment I felt that time was not, that death was little, and change a mockery. The wise years let nothing die, and always the circle came full again, bringing back lost hopes and dreams. The still and golden afternoon spoke the same message to my heart. I felt the serene continuance

of all things, the sense of something eternal behind the trivial ways of man.

I reached Hardriding a little after four, and according to my plan sat down to read and smoke. But I soon found that idleness was impossible. I was strung too high with expectation. I wandered into the library, and then into the garden, but my eyes were always turning to the shoulder of hill which marked the opening of the Fawn Glen. Then I resolved to go to meet Linford. Whatever had hapened, it would be right for me to welcome Miss Virginia to Hardriding.

Before I had crossed the lawns my mood changed utterly. I suddenly became a prey to black forebodings. The doggerel Latin of True Thomas rang in my head like the croak of a raven:—

Ubi Faunus fluit Spes mortalis ruit.

I tried to laugh at it. I told myself that the verses were no doubt the work of a foolish eighteenth-century parson. What harm could follow the meeting of two friends in a hill glen where their forebears had fought and loved? But I reasoned in vain. A deadly depression overmastered me. The light had gone out of the sky, and the bent, all yellow in the westering sun, seemed wan as death.

Where Fawn flows Man's hope goes.

The dolorous refrain would not leave me.

I emerged from the park into the water meadows where Fawn runs deep among flags and meadow - sweet. Beyond them I came to the lower glen, where the fir-clad slopes leave a thin strip of pasture by the stream. Here I should have met the two, but there was no sign of them. I looked at my watch and found it after five.

Then I began to quicken my pace. My depression had turned to acute anxiety. Before me was half a mile of open strath, and then the Green Dod, where the Glen turned sharply to the right. I ran that half-mile with dread in my heart of what I might see beyond it. But when I came to the Green Dod there was still no sign of a human being. The Fawn flows round the shoulder of hill in a narrow defile, at the upper end of which begins the Green Glen. I resolved to wait there, for I realised that I could not enter the Glen. I

can give no reason for this, but I knew the truth of it. My feet could not have carried me round the shoulder of hill.

I did not wait long. Suddenly down the defile came a single figure. It was Linford, but even to my distraught sight a different Linford from him I had known. As I have said he was a big fellow, a little ungainly, a little afraid of his size. But now he was a noble figure of a man, and as he strode along there was a strange mastery and dignity in him. But why was he alone? I blinked my eyes, for I saw that he was not alone. He carried in his arms something slim and white and very quiet. I crouched behind a boulder as he came near, but he had no eyes for anything but his burden. His head was bent over it, and his face was wild and drawn with grief. Then I saw that a fair head lay limply in the crook of his arm and that the face was very pale.

The doctors called it heart failure. Miss Virginia, said one of them in a moment of poetry, had for years had a frail chariot for her body and the horses of her spirit had driven too fiercely. She must have had heart trouble, though no one had diagnosed it. The hill walk from Cauldshaw had been too much for her. The same man spoke wisely about the evils of our modern life. "Most people to-day," he said, "have temperaments that prey on their bodies. They must live at white heat and the shell cracks. . .

Years afterwards, when time had taken the edge off his grief, Linford told me something of what happened. "She met me, looking very well and jolly, and we walked to the place you call the Bower. You may laugh at me, but I tell you I had a presentiment that something was going to happen, but I couldn't be sure whether it was good or bad. . . . She looked all round the Glen and sighed happily, as if she had found something she liked very much. Then suddenly she gave a little cry and went very white. I caught her, and saw that she was all in a shiver. She was staring at the burn, and her eyes were round and frightened like a deer's. Then she smiled again, and turned to me with a look -Oh, my God, I can never forget it! It was so kind and happy and . . . She must have cared for me all the time, and like a blind fool I didn't know it. She put her arms round my neck and said, 'My ain true love'-I suppose she was quoting from a Scotch song. And just as I was bursting with joy I felt that her cheek was cold. . . .

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Now it is a curious thing, but in the 'Scotichronicon' of Hume of Calzeat-it is in manuscript, and I do not think any one living has read it besides myself-there is a version of the story of Maid Marjory. And according to that version, when the lady confronted her father in the Green Glen, she put her arm around the Douglas's neck, and said, "My ain true love."

AHMED PASHA ARABI.

passes to eminence. No one who saw the white-bearded Arabi sitting half asleep in his little house in Ceylon, or afterwards at Helouan, would have dreamed that it had been his lot once to make all the Powers thoroughly excited, and finally to go to war with England; yet, so strangely do things happen, this rough old man, whose death caused not the slightest stir either in Egypt or in Europe, was at one time the most important figure in the near East, and acted as a kind of burly monarch of the Nile.

ON 21st September 1911 one of Nature's particular there died at Helouan, near Cairo, a venerable but apparently quite undistinguished old Egyptian of the peasant class, who, some thirty years ago, from a precarious situation as doorkeeper to a small Levantine warehouseman in Alexandria, pushed his way, as it were by the aid of an ironical Fortune, into the office of Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army and Dictator of the country's destinies, only to be bundled back into obscurity once more after an ecstatic month or two, like a discarded doll into the cupboard. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether rather simple men have a special liability to become the tools of Destiny by reason of some potent quality only comprehended by men in their more sheep-like moments, or whether Fate, being very, very young, selects her instruments with the most noteworthy gullibility. For Ahmed Arabi was unquestionably a man of no great intelligence and of no brilliance at all; and yet at one time he found himself somewhat bewildered, it is true-in a position to measure swords with the armies of Britain, and to set the entire civilised world to discussing his personality. How he came to reach that elevated position is a matter of wonder to all those who do not bear in mind the seeming absurdities practised so often by Fortune, nor call a kind of brutal simplicity

Ahmed Arabi was born in 1839, so far as he knew, at a small village of the province of Charkieh, in Lower Egypt. His father was a fellah, or peasant, who owned two or three acres of ground which he cultivated with his own hands, bringing up his four sons to follow the same means of livelihood. The young Arabi thus passed his youth without education and without any knowledge of the outside world; but, being of a restless disposition, he made his way, while still in his 'teens, to Alexandria, where after some vicissitudes he obtained a situation as bowab, or doorkeeper, at 8 small warehouse. His large, imposing figure and strong, massive features, however, soon caused him to fall under the notice of the army recruiting officers; and he was speedily conscribed,

probably at about the age of with he gave orders for Arabi's eighteen.

As a soldier he was a considerable success, and it was not long before he received promotion. At that time the Egyptian army was a a mere rabble, officered by men of all social grades. Any tinker or Any tinker or tailor who had come into the good graces of an important personage might be given a commission in the army; or again, any private soldier or corporal who showed the slightest ascendancy over his colleagues might suddenly find himself raised to the rank of captain, a position which carried with it little more than the right to shout and gesticulate on parade with freedom. At the death of the Khedive Said, in 1863, Arabi was already a captain in the regiment which was permanently on duty at the palace in Cairo; and, although still under twentyfive years of age, he seems to have been a somewhat conspicuous figure, not only by reason of his hulking size and of his noisy, good-natured boisterousness, but because of his rather pushing and assertive manners.

One day, early in the reign of the Khedive Ismail, a sad misfortune befel the young man. He was behaving in his usual hearty manner in front of the palace, jesting, laughing, and indulging in some form of horse-play, when the Khedive looked out of the window in a very black temper. "Upon my word," said His Highness, "you are more noisy than the big drum, and much less useful;" and there

immediate punishment. The punishment does not seem to have been severe, but it was sufficient to engender in his heart the most bitter resentment towards the Khedive, who was already much disliked by Egyptian military men owing to his favouritism towards the Turkish and Circassian officers, of whom there was a large number in the army. In this state of mind he attached himself to a secret society, whose aim was the deposition of the Khedive, thus relieving his distraught feelings by plotting all manner of calamities for his sovereign lord. Nothing, of course, resulted from these proceedings, and many years had passed before Arabi came into any prominence outside his small circle of discontented brotherofficers.

War broke out between Abyssinia and Egypt, and Arabi, now a man not far short of forty years of age, was placed in charge of the transports at Massowah. Being left to his own devices, he soon found that the job could be made a very profitable one to himself, and for some time he laboured wholeheartedly at the pleasurable task of amassing money at Government expense. In the end, however, a charge of corruption was brought against him, and he was disgraced and cashiered.

Stranded in Cairo with nothing to do, and with his heart full of hatred towards the Khedive Ismail, who had dismissed him, Arabi began to

frequent El Azhar, the great Moslem college, where, in the open galleries, he listened to the lectures of the Muhammedan teachers, and learnt by heart a large number of passages from the Koran, which in after-life he quoted on all possible occasions. This piety seems to have served him in good stead, for it was not long before he was pardoned by the Khedive and readmitted into the army, a fact, however, which did not deter him from joining once more the secret society, and resuming the intrigues against His Highness.

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This society had now assumed some importance, and its power in the army was something of a menace to discipline. Arabi, by his vehement and incautious denunciations of the Khedive, came to be regarded as a moving spirit in its councils; and his rustic violence seems to have supplied just that touch of excitement to the community which made each member feel that at last he really was participating in big things. Too unwise to feel the need of restraint, Arabi ranted and cursed, and sent shivers of nervous ecstasy down the backs of his colleagues, thereby providing that very sensation of which every member of a secret society is in search. Somebody, however, betrayed them to Ismail, who at once sent for the ringleaders. They went to the Palace with haggard faces and shaking knees, like so many naughty schoolboys, Arabi himself being in a most mortal fear. The Khedive, however, had no in

tention of being hard upon them. None realised better than he the delights of intrigue. He was, to use a paraphrase, always playing at Pirates and Red Indians himself; and he felt that, in this case, it would be much more amusing for them all to play together in one big game. He therefore, there and then, promoted the seventy worst offenders to be colonels in his army; and to Arabi, as being the most noisy of them all, he gave one of his concubines (in whom he had lost interest) to be his wife and helpmeet. Arabi then swore to defend Ismail's honour with his life, and to work only for his interests. Shortly after this, however, in 1879, Ismail was deposed; and, forty-eight hours after the deposition, Arabi was on his knee before the new Khedive, Tewfik, swearing to defend his honour till death.

With the deposition of Ismail it was agreed that the army, which now stood at some 45,000 men, should be reduced to 18,000; and this, of course, produced very considerable discontent in military circles. A great many officers had to be put on half-pay, and much annoyance was caused to the Egyptians when it was found that the majority of Turkish and Circassian officers serving in the army were retained on the active list. Arabi, now a full colonel in command of the 4th Regiment, at once recommenced his intrigues, and soon became the not unwilling tool of a certain ounning Turkish officer named Mahmoud Sami, who had his own axe to grind.

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