ing
of her bargain. "See him cry after the man! What shall I do with him?"

"Let me take him," urged Dwight. "I'll button him up in my jacket and
he'll forget and go to sleep, and then, when he wakes, he'll be all
right."

"Do you think so? Well, here he is--but tie the string tight to
something, so that you won't lose him, please."

"Of course--to my buttonhole, here. There Mr. Monkey, you can't
complain of that for a nest--see here! Don't scratch so, you little
varmint! You'll tear my shirt front to smithereens."

For a time there certainly was danger of such a catastrophe, but by
soothing and petting the tiny thing was at length appeased, and settled
down to slumber, while Dwight, in great content over his odd burden,
trudged along with the rest, wishing more than ever that the little
treasure were his very own.

They had a delightful stroll of three hours up and down the queer
scrambling streets of the old town, stopping now and then to buy fruit,
or curios, of the merchants in the open booths, sitting cross-legged
and solemn over their long pipes, and seeming so utterly indifferent to
purchasers, until they were in danger of losing them, when they woke to
eager gesticulation and gabble.

Occasionally, they peered into the doors of the native schools, where
the scholars squatted on shelves about the dim room, and were graduated
as to size, the largest sitting nearest the ceiling.

"For all the world," whispered Hope, "like a cupboard full of china
pitchers!"

Next to this, perhaps, would be a group that only needed framing to
make a picture, where two grave men, each wrapped in his burnous, sat
Turk-fashion, playing checkers before a low doorway, while back in the
shadow an indistinct figure, in flowing white drapery, touched the
strings of some instrument which sent out a sound of thin tinkling,
that could scarcely be called music because so tuneless and monotonous.

In places the streets were so very narrow, dark, and filthy, and the
few figures slid away into the windowless house walls in so ghostlike a
fashion, that the girls hesitated a little before following their guide.

"I feel a good deal as if I were going through a graveyard," whispered
Bess once, "only it's one where the inmates sometimes walk!"

"Yes," said Mr. Lawrence, and told her how a French author who has
written well and largely of this odd corner of the earth, called these
steep dark streets, "mysterious staircases leading t