he budding girls, and one or two of the best looking of the women.

"Everything of value, that was readily portable, had been seized, each
raider keeping his own lootings. Then, at last, at a given signal, the
murderers and robbers reformed themselves into a solid company, and
rode away, setting fire to the village in half-a-dozen separate places
before they left.

"I was, of course, one of the girls whose life had been spared. The
man who had seized upon me, when, in my fright, I had run from my bed
to the cottage door, had flashed the light of a torch upon me, and even
now I can recall the fierce delight and satisfaction that leaped into
his greedy eyes, and the manner of his mutterings:

"Good! Good! She'll _sell_ well!"

"He stood over me while I dressed warmly, then hurried me out into the
open again. Grandmother had made no sound, given no sign of waking,
and I wondered. I wanted to go into the little room where her bed was,
but my captor would not let me--I never saw her again, and can only
fear that, if God had not already taken her in her sleep (and sometimes
I think this must have been the case), she was slain with the rest of
the old people.

"Of the next week I have no distinct remembrance. I believe I
travelled, travelled, travelled, ate, drank, slept, but all my
faculties seemed numbed, and my mind was largely a blank. It was when
I was being taken into Constantinople, that I began to arouse from my
strange mental and physical stupor.

"It was through the cool mist of the morning that I got my first
glimpse of the city of which I had heard so much. Santa Sophia, rising
like some beautiful dream-structure, with the points of its four light,
airy, minarets flashing in the sunlight. Then, little by little,
kiosks, tall sad-looking cypresses, sycamores, and the other
thousand-and-one wonders of that city of beautiful and revolting
contradictions, took shape and form.

"By seven o'clock we were in the heart of the city, and breakfasting.
My captor had treated me with a certain rough kindness through all the
journey, and done his best to hearten me. He had told me my fate--to
be sold into a harem--but he had pictured it as glowingly, as
glitteringly as his rough eloquence would let him. And, with all the
blood of countless centuries of Eastern races coursing in my veins, and
in the more or less stunned, stupified condition in which that awful
night-tragedy had left me, I yielded, for the time