er-off class
of travellers, but, by the force of a grand law of compensations,
as certainly disposes them to fraternize with each other. There are,
unquestionably, some very powerful affinities which draw together men
past the prime of life, when they wear bad hats, seedy black coats very
wide in the skirt, and Berlin gloves. It is not alone that if they smoke
the tobacco is of the same coarse kind, and that brandy-and-water is a
fountain where they frequently meet, but there are mysterious points
of agreement about them which develop rapidly into close intimacy, and
would even rise to friendship if either of them was capable of such a
weakness.

They had met, casually, at "Miseri's" at Constantinople, and agreed to
go up the Black Sea together. Now, though assuredly any common observer
passing them might not readily be able to distinguish one from the other
again, both being fat, broad-shouldered, vulgar-looking men of about
fifty-four or more, yet each was a sort of puzzle to the other; and
in the curiosity thus inspired, there grew up a bond between them that
actually served to unite them.

If we forbore any attempt at mystification with our valued reader in an
early stage of this history, it is not now, that we draw to its close,
we would affect any secrecy. Let us, therefore, at once announce the
travellers by their names; one being Terry Driscoll, the other the
Reverend Paul Classon.

Driscoll had dropped hints--vague hints only--that he had come out
to look after a nephew of his, a kind of scapegrace who was always in
trouble; but in what regiment he served, or where, or whether he was yet
alive, or had been broke and sent home, were all little casualties which
he contemplated and discussed with a strange amount of composure. As
for Paul, without ever entering directly upon the personal question, he
suffered his ministerial character to ooze slowly out, and left it to
be surmised that he was a gentleman of the press, unengaged, and a
Christian minister, unattached.

Not that these personal facts were declared in the abrupt manner they
are here given to the reader. Far from it; they merely loomed through
the haze of their discourse as, walking the deck for hours, they
canvassed the war and its objects, and its probable results. Upon all
these themes they agreed wonderfully, each being fully satisfied that
the whole campaign was only a well-concerted roguery,--a scheme for the
dismemberment of Turkey, when she