e not worth the _tcherkeske_ of an
honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my
_magaika_ is better than both!"

"All the same," said Rue Carew, "with those stolen plans in your
Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a _sotnia_ of your
Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba."

"By heaven! I'd like to try!" he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.

"There are _dongas_," observed the Princess dryly.

"I know it. There are _dongas_ every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse
that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop!
and hurrah for Achi-Baba!"

"Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn't it be nicer to be able to come
back again and tell us all about it?"

"As for that," he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, "no
need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What
is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its
respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes
on its newly laundered cuffs?

"I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts--Kilid Bahr,
Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been
about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we
want of their plans, then----"

"Nothing, Prince Erlik!" said Rue, laughing. "It suffices that you be
appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar."

Sengoun laughed with all his might.

"And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in
Russia," he added with a bow to the Princess, "are, first of all, more
Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my
incomparable Princess might deign to honour me."

"Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music-room and
play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until
Miss Carew and I rejoin you," said the Princess, rising.

At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, passing his
arm through Neeland's with boyish confidence that his quickly given
friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music-room where
presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing
songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a
fortune for him:

"We are but horsemen,
And God is great.
We hunt on hill and fen
The fierce Kerait,
Naiman and Eighur,
Tartar and Khiounnou,
Leopard and Tiger
Flee at our view-halloo;
We are but horsemen
Cleansing the hill and f