the rose-gardens. It may be hot work, so I
thought you would like it."

Of course I did, and asked the programme which Sir Galahad, as lucidly
as a man utterly in love can tell anything, unfolded to me. Fortune
favored him; it was the night of the Feast of Bairam, when all the world
of Turkey lights its lamps and turns out; he had got leave under pretext
of a shooting trip into Roumelia, but the game he was intent on was the
captive Circassian, who in the confusion and _tintamarre_ attendant on
Bairam, was to escape to him by the rose-gardens, and being carried off
as swiftly as Syrian stallions could take them, would be borne away by
her infidel lover on board a yacht, belonging to a man whom he knew who
was cruising in the Bosphorus, which would steam them away down the
Dardanelles before the Turk had a chance of getting in chase. Nothing
could be better planned for everybody but the luckless Mussulman who was
to be robbed,--and the whole thing had a fine flavor about it of dash
and difficulty, of piquance and poetry, of Mediaeval errantry and
Oriental coloring, that put Leilah's Giaour most deliciously in his
element, setting apart the treasure that he would carry off in that
rich, soft, antelope-eyed, bright-haired Circassian loveliness which
made all the dreams in Lalla Rookh and Don Juan look pale.

So his raid was planned, and I agreed to go with him to cover the rear
in case of pursuit, which was likely enough to be hot and sharp, for the
Moslems, for all their apathy, lack the philosophic gratitude which your
British husband usually exhibits towards his despoiler--but then, to be
sure, an Englishman can't make a fresh purchase unless he's first robbed
of the old! Night came; and the nights, I am forced to admit, have a
witching charm of their own in the East, that the West never knows. The
Commander of the Faithful went to prayer, with the roar of cannon and
the roll of drums pealing down the Golden Horn, and along the
cypress-clad valleys. The mosques and minarets, starred and circled with
a myriad of lamps, gleamed through the dark foliage, and were mirrored
in the silvery sheet of the waves. The caiques, as they swept along,
left tracks of light in the phosphor-lit waves, and while the chant of
the Muezzin rang through the air, the children of Allah, from one end of
the Bosphorus to the other, held festival on the most holy eve of
Bairam. A splendid night for a lyric of Swinburne's!--a superb scene for
an