of black cloth, faced with black silk, immense blue pantaloons which contained more than twenty metres of cotton cloth, and great boots of Russia leather, elastic and stout.  The only rich thing in his costume was a scarf embroidered with gold and precious stones, which might be worth two or three thousand francs.  It inclosed in its folds an embroidered cashmere purse, a Damascus sanjar in a silver sheath, a long pistol mounted in gold and rubies, and the appropriate baton.

Quietly seated in the midst of his employees, Hadgi-Stavros moved only the ends of his fingers and his lips; the lips to dictate his correspondence, the fingers to count the beads in his chaplet.  It was one of those beautiful chaplets of milky amber which do not serve to number prayers, but to amuse the solemn idleness of the Turk.

He raised his head at our approach, guessed at a glance the occurrence which had brought us there, and said to us, with a gravity which had in it nothing ironical, “You are welcome!  Be seated.”

“Sir,” cried Mrs. Simons, “I am an Englishwoman, and—­” He interrupted the discourse by making his tongue smack against the teeth of his upper jaw—­superb teeth, indeed!  “Presently,” said he:  “I am occupied.”  He understood only Greek, and Mrs. Simons knew only English; but the physiognomy of the King was so speaking that the good lady comprehended easily without the aid of an interpreter.

Selections from ‘The King of the Mountains’ used by permission of J.E.  Tilton and Company.

THE VICTIM

From ‘The Man with the Broken Ear’:  by permission of Henry Holt, the Translator.

Leon took his bunch of keys and opened the long oak box on which he had been seated.  The lid being raised, they saw a great leaden casket which inclosed a magnificent walnut box carefully polished on the outside, lined on the inside with white silk, and padded.

The others brought their lamps and candles near, and the colonel of the Twenty-third of the line appeared as if he were in a chapel illuminated for his lying in state.

One would have said that the man was asleep.  The perfect preservation of the body attested the paternal care of the murderer.  It was truly a remarkable preparation, and would have borne comparison with the finest European mummies described by Vicq d’Azyr in 1779, and by the younger Puymaurin in 1787.  The part best preserved, as is always the case, was the face.  All the features had maintained a proud and manly expression.  If any old friend of the colonel had been at the opening of the third box, he would have recognized him at first sight.  Undoubtedly the point of the nose was a little sharper, the nostrils less expanded and thinner, and the bridge a little more marked, than in the year 1813.  The eyelids were thinned, the lips pinched, the corners of the mouth drawn down, the cheek bones too prominent, and the neck visibly shrunken, which