Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven, and one said, Alas, that we drank of the curious liquors.  They have made us weary, and in dreamless sleep these two long centuries have we lain.  Our homes are desolate, our friends are dead.  Behold, the jig is up—­let us die.  And that same day went they forth and laid them down and died.  And in that self-same day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease in Ephesus, for that the Seven that were up were down again, and departed and dead withal.  And the names that be upon their tombs, even unto this time, are Johannes Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and Low, Jack, and The Game.  And with the sleepers lie also the bottles wherein were once the curious liquors:  and upon them is writ, in ancient letters, such words as these—­Dames of heathen gods of olden time, perchance:  Rumpunch, Jinsling, Egnog.

Such is the story of the Seven Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and I know it is true, because I have seen the cave myself.

Really, so firm a faith had the ancients this legend, that as late as eight or nine hundred years ago, learned travelers held it in superstitious fear.  Two of them record that they ventured into it, but ran quickly out again, not daring to tarry lest they should fall asleep and outlive their great grand-children a century or so.  Even at this day the ignorant denizens of the neighboring country prefer not to sleep in it.

CHAPTER XLI.

When I last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus.  We are in Syria, now, encamped in the mountains of Lebanon.  The interregnum has been long, both as to time and distance.  We brought not a relic from Ephesus!  After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments from the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to disgorge!  He had an order from Constantinople to look out for our party, and see that we carried nothing off.  It was a wise, a just, and a well-deserved rebuke, but it created a sensation.  I never resist a temptation to plunder a stranger’s premises without feeling insufferably vain about it.  This time I felt proud beyond expression.  I was serene in the midst of the scoldings that were heaped upon the Ottoman government for its affront offered to a pleasuring party of entirely respectable gentlemen and ladies I said, “We that have free souls, it touches us not.”  The shoe not only pinched our party, but it pinched hard; a principal sufferer discovered that the imperial order was inclosed in an envelop bearing the seal of the British Embassy at Constantinople, and therefore must have been inspired by the representative of the Queen.  This was bad—­very bad.  Coming solely from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman hatred of Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to