ten years' time for just as many thousands of piastres to some
illustrious pasha. This was how Leonidas was able to build himself
palaces at Smyrna.

"You talk nonsense, my worthy Chorbadzhi," said the merchant, when he
had somewhat recovered himself. "Shall I prove it to you? Well, then,
in the first place, you do not sell your children, and, in the second
place, why shouldn't you sell them? If a Circassian wrapped in a
bear-skin comes to you and asks you for your daughter, would you not
give her to him? And at the very outside he would only give you a
dozen cows for her, and as many asses. I, on the other hand, offer you
a thousand piastres for them from good, worthy, influential beys, or
perhaps from the Sultan himself, and yet you haggle about it."

The sheik's face began to show wrath and irritation. He was well aware
that the merchant was now dealing in sophisms, though his simple
intellect could not quite get at the root of their fallacy. It was
plain that there was a great difference between a Circassian dressed
in bear-skin, who carries off a girl in exchange for a dozen cows, and
the Captain-General of Rumelia, who is ready to give a thousand ducats
for her--and yet he preferred the gentleman in bear-skins.

The Greek, meanwhile, appeared to be studying the features of the
Circassian with an attentive eye, watching what impression his words
had produced, like the experimenting doctor who tries the effects of
his medicaments _in anima vili_.

"But I know that you will give them. Kasi Mollah," he resumed, filling
up his chibook. "No doubt you have promised them to another trader.
Well, well! you are a cunning rogue. Merchants of Dirbend or Bagdad
have no doubt offered you more for them. They can afford it, they do
such a roaring business. Those perfidious Armenians! They buy the
children for a mere song, and sell them when they are eight or nine
years old to the pashas, so that not one of them lives to see his
twentieth year, but all die miserably in the mean time. I don't do
such things. I am an honest man, with whom business is but a labor of
love, and who is just to all men. It is sufficient for me to say that
I was born where Aristides used to live. Numbers and numbers of my
ancestors were in the Areopagus, and one of my great-great-uncles was
an archon. Do not imagine, therefore, that I would do for every
foolish fellow what I offer to do for you. I only do kindnesses to my
chosen friends; the ties of f