btain from the Cabinet here, by a sort of influence which our
Stock Exchange people in London scarcely regard as regular.'

The Pasha nodded to imply attention, and smoked on as before.

'But I weary your Excellency,' said Atlee, rising, 'and my real business
here is accomplished.'

'Tell my lord that I await his arrival with impatience, that of all pending
questions none shall receive solution till he comes, that I am the very
least of his servants.' And with an air of most dignified sincerity, he
bowed him out, and Atlee hastened away to tell his chief that he had
'squared the Turk,' and would sail on the morrow.

CHAPTER LXIII

ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS

On board the Austrian Lloyd's steamer in which he sailed from
Constantinople, Joseph Atlee employed himself in the composition of a small
volume purporting to be _The Experiences of a Two Years' Residence in
Greece_. In an opening chapter of this work he had modestly intimated to
the reader how an intimate acquaintance with the language and literature of
modern Greece, great opportunities of mixing with every class and condition
of the people, a mind well stored with classical acquirements and
thoroughly versed in antiquarian lore, a strong poetic temperament and the
feeling of an artist for scenery, had all combined to give him a certain
fitness for his task; and by the extracts from his diary it would be seen
on what terms of freedom he conversed with Ministers and ambassadors, even
with royalty itself.

A most pitiless chapter was devoted to the exposure of the mistakes and
misrepresentations of a late _Quarterly_ article called 'Greece and her
Protectors,' whose statements were the more mercilessly handled and
ridiculed that the paper in question had been written by himself, and the
sarcastic allusions to the sources of the information not the less pungent
on that account.

That the writer had been admitted to frequent audiences of the king, that
he had discussed with his Majesty the cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth,
that the king had seriously confided to him his belief that in the event
of his abdication, the Ionian Islands must revert to him as a personal
appanage, the terms on which they were annexed to Greece being decided by
lawyers to bear this interpretation--all these Atlee denied of his own
knowledge, an asked the reader to follow him into the royal cabinet for his
reasons.

When, therefore, he heard that from some damage to the machinery