"'That's a fine figure of a man,' she said. 'He looks strong enough for anything.'

"I didn't encourage her admiration. 'He might be made useful on a farm,' I said; 'if his legs were as big as the rest of him, he could draw a plow as well as an ox.'

"She made no answer to this; but her interest in astronomy seemed to decrease, and she soon proposed that we should turn back to the town. On the way we met the stranger again, and this time he stopped and asked us some questions about the country and the neighborhood. All the time we were talking he and my scholar were looking at each other, and each of them seemed entirely satisfied with the survey. The next day the girl was very inattentive at school, and in the afternoon, when I hoped to take a walk with her, I could not find her, and went out by myself. Before long I saw her sitting under a tree, talking to the stranger of yesterday."

"She was a regular flirt," said Mrs. Crowder.

"Apparently she was," replied her husband; "but although I might have excused her, considering how much better suited this stranger was to her, in point of years at least, I was not willing to withdraw and leave her to another, especially as he might be a person entirely unworthy of her.

"I did not disturb them, but I went back to the town and made some inquiries about the stranger. I found that he was a Danite, and lived with his parents in Zorah, and that his name was Samson. I also learned that his family was possessed of considerable means.

"It soon became plain that it would not be easy for me to carry out my marriage plans and settle down among my vines and fig-trees. Samson went home, told his parents of his desire to marry this girl, and in the course of time they all came down to Timnath and made regular matrimonial propositions to her parents."

"Was this the great Samson who tore lions apart and threw down temples?" asked Mrs. Crowder, in amazement.

"The very man," was the reply; "and he was the most formidable rival I ever had in that sort of affair. The proper thing for me to do, according to the custom of the times, would have been to take him aside, as soon as I found that he was paying attentions to my sweetheart, and fight him; but the more I looked at him and his peculiar proportions, the more I was convinced that he was not a man with whom I wanted to fight."

"I should think not," said Mrs. Crowder. "How glad I am thee never touched him!"

"The result might not have been disastrous to me," he said; "for although I have always avoided military matters as much as possible, I was probably better versed in the use of a sword than he was. But I did not care to kill him, and from what I heard of him afterward, I am sure that if he had ever got those long arms around me I should have been a mass of broken bones.

"So, taking everything into consideration, I gave up my plan to marry this girl of Timnath; and I was afterward very glad I did so, for she proved a tricky creature, and entered into a conspiracy to deceive her husband, actually weeping before him seven days in order to worm out of him the secret of his strength."

"I suppose thee never met Delilah?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

"Oh, no," he answered; "before Samson was married I left that part of the world, and I did not make the acquaintance of the attractive young person who was so successful in the grand competition of discovering the source of Samson's strength. In fact, it was nearly a hundred years after that before I heard of those great exploits of Samson which have given him such widespread fame."

"I am glad thee never met Delilah," said Mrs. Crowder, reflectively; "for thee, too, was possessed of a great secret, and she might have gained it from thee."



IV

"I think thee was in great danger," continued Mrs. Crowder, "in that Samson business. It makes me shudder to think, even now, of what might have happened to thee."

"There was not much danger," said he; "for all I had to do was to withdraw, and there was an end to the matter. I have often and often been in greater danger than that. For instance, I was in the army of Xerxes, compelled to enter it simply because I happened to be in Persia. My sympathies were entirely with the Greeks. My age did not protect me at all. Everybody who in any way could be made useful was dragged into that army. It was known that I had a knowledge of engineering and surveying, and I was taken into the army to help build bridges and lay out camps.

"Here it was that I saw the curious method of counting the soldiers which was adopted by the officers of Xerxes's army. As you may have read, ten thousand men were collected on a plain and made to stand close together in a mass nearly circular in shape. Then a strong fence, with a wide gate to the west and another to the east, was built around them, and I was engaged in the constructing and strengthening of this fence. When the fence was finished, the men were ordered to march out of the inclosure, and other soldiers marched in until it was again entirely filled. This process was repeated until the whole army had been in the inclosure. Thus they got rid of the labor of counting—measuring the army instead of enumerating it. But the results were not accurate. I was greatly interested in the matter, and on three occasions I stood at the exit gate as the soldiers were coming out, and counted them, and the number never amounted to ten thousand. One counting showed less than seven thousand, —the men did not pack themselves together as closely as they were packed the first time,—so I am confident that Xerxes's army was not so large as it was reported to be.

"I became so much interested in the operations and constitution of this great horde of soldiers, attendants, animals, vehicles, and ships, that I went about looking at everything and getting all the information possible. In these days I would have been a war correspondent, and I did act somewhat in that capacity; for I told Herodotus a great many of the facts which he put into his history of this great campaign."

"Thee knew Herodotus?" his wife asked.

"Oh, yes; I worked with him a long time, and gave him information which helped him very much in writing his histories; but it would have been of greater advantage to the world if he had adhered more closely to my statements. I told him what I discovered in regard to the enumeration of the army of Xerxes, but he wanted to make that army as big as he could, and he paid little attention to my remonstrances.

"Herodotus was only four years old when Xerxes invaded Greece, and of course all his knowledge concerning that expedition was second-hand, and by the time he began to write his history of the campaign there were very few people living who knew anything personally about it. If he had not been a man so entirely wrapped up in his own work he would have wondered how any one of my apparent age could give him so much in the way of personal experience; but he seemed to have no suspicions, and, at any rate, asked no questions, and as I had a great desire that this remarkable historical event should be fully recorded, I helped him as much as I could.

"I had been assisting in the construction of the canal behind Mount Athos, which Xerxes made in order to afford a short cut for his vessels, and as I had frequently climbed into the various portions of the mountain in order to make surveys of the country below, I had obtained a pretty good knowledge of the neighborhood; and when disaster after disaster began to hurl themselves upon this unfortunate multitude of invaders, I took measures for my safety. I did not want to go back to Persia, even if I could go there, which looked very doubtful after the battle of Salamis, and as I had come into the country with the Persians, it might have been unsafe to show myself with the Greeks; so, remembering what I had seen of the wild regions of Mount Athos, I made my way there, with the intention of dwelling in its rocky fastnesses until the country should become safe for the ordinary wayfarer. As there was no opportunity of teaching school on that desolate mountain—"

"And marrying one of thy scholars," interpolated Mrs. Crowder.

"—I became a sort of hermit," he continued; "but I did not spend my time after the usual fashion of the conventional hermit, who lives on water-cresses and reads great books with a skull to keep the pages open. I built myself a rude cabin under a great rock, and lived somewhat after the fashion of the other inhabitants of that wild region, mostly robbers and outlaws. As I had nothing which any one would want to steal, I was not afraid of them, and I could occasionally be of a little service to them, especially in the way of rude medical attendance, for which they were willing to pay me by giving me now and then some food.

"I had laid in a stock of writing-materials before I went up on the mountain, and I now went to work with great enthusiasm to set down what I knew of the expedition of Xerxes, and here it was that I made the notes which were afterward so useful to Herodotus.

"When the country became quieter I went down into the plains, looked over the battle-fields, and obtained a great deal of information from the villagers and country people. I stayed here nearly two years, and had a pretty hard time of it; but when I went away I took with me a very valuable collection of notes.

"For many years I made no use of these notes; but being in Halicarnassus, I heard of Herodotus, who was described as a great scholar and traveler, and engaged in writing history. To him I applied without loss of time, and I made a regular engagement, working several hours with him every day. For this he paid me weekly a sum equal to about two dollars and seventy-five cents of our present money; but it was enough to support me, and I was very glad to have the opportunity of sending some of my experiences and observations down into history. It was at this time that the love of literary work began to arise within me, and in the next three or four centuries after the death of Herodotus I wrote a number of books on various subjects and under various names, and some of these, as I mentioned before, were destroyed with the Alexandrian Library.

"It was in this period that I made the acquaintance of an editor—the first editor, in fact, of whom I know anything at all. I was in Rhodes, and there was a learned man there named Andronicus, who was engaged in editing the works of Aristotle. All the manuscripts and books which that great philosopher left behind him had been given to a friend, or trustee, and had passed from this person into the possession of others, so that for about a hundred years the world knew nothing of them. Then they came into the hands of Andronicus, who undertook to edit them and get them into proper shape for publication. I went to Andronicus, and as soon as he found I was a person qualified for such work, he engaged me as his assistant editor. I held this position for several years, and two or three of the books of Aristotle I transcribed entirely with my own hand, properly shaping sentences and paragraphs, and very often making the necessary divisions. From my experience with Andronicus, I am sure that none of the works of Aristotle were given to the world exactly as he wrote them, for we often found his manuscript copies very rough and disjointed so far as literary construction is concerned, but I will also say that we never interfered with his philosophical theories or his scientific statements and deductions."

"In all that time thee never married?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

Crowder and I could not help laughing.

"I did not say so," said he, "but I will say that, with one exception, I do not remember any interesting matrimonial alliances which occurred during the period of my literary labors. I married a young woman of Rhodes, and gave her a very considerable establishment, which I was able to do, for Andronicus paid me much better than Herodotus had done; but she did not prove a very suitable helpmeet, and I believe she married me simply because I was in fairly good circumstances. She soon showed that she preferred a young man to an elderly student, the greater part of whose time was occupied with books and manuscripts, and we had not been married a year when she ran away with a young goldsmith, and disappeared from Rhodes, as I discovered, on a vessel bound for Rome. I resigned myself to my loss, and did not even try to obtain news of her. I was too much engrossed in my work to be interested in a runaway wife.

"It was a little more than half a century after this that I was in Rome and sitting on the steps of one of the public buildings in the Forum. I was waiting to meet some one with whom I had business, and while I sat there an old woman stopped in front of me. She was evidently poor, and wretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkled and shrunken. I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about to give her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her and exclaimed, 'How like! How like! How like!' 'Like whom?' said I. 'What are you talking about?' 'Like your father,' she said, 'like your father! You are so like him, you resemble him so much in form and feature, in the way you sit, in everything, that you must be his son!' 'I have no doubt I am my father's son,' said I, 'and what do you know about him?' 'I married him,' she said. 'For nearly a year I was his wife, and then I foolishly ran away and left him. What became of him I know not, nor how long he lived, but he was a great deal older than I was, and must have passed away many years ago. But thou art his image. He had the same ruddy face, the same short white hair, the same broad shoulders, the same way of crossing his legs as he sat. He must have married soon after I left him. Tell me, whom did he marry? What was thy mother's name?' I gave her the name of my real mother, and she shook her head. 'I never heard of her,' she said. 'Did thy father ever speak of me, a wife who ran away from him?' 'Yes; he has spoken of you—that is, if you are Zalia, the daughter of an oil-merchant of Rhodes?'



"'I am that woman,' she exclaimed, 'I am that woman! And did he mourn my loss?'

"'Not much, I think, not much.' Then I became a little nervous, for if this old woman talked to me much longer I was afraid, in spite of the fact that I was an elderly man when she was a girl, that she would become convinced that I could not be the son of the man who had once been her husband, but must be that man himself. So I hastily excused myself on the plea of business, and after having given her some money I left her."

"And did thee never see her again?" his wife asked, almost with tears in her eyes.

"No, I never saw her again," said Mr. Crowder; "I was careful not to do that: but I did not neglect her; I caused good care to be taken of her until she died."

There was a slight pause here, and then Mrs. Crowder said:

"Thee has known a great deal of poverty; in nearly all thy stories thee is a poor man."

"There is good reason for that," said Mr. Crowder; "poor people frequently have more adventures, at least more interesting ones, than those who are in easy circumstances. Possession of money is apt to make life smoother and more commonplace; so, in selecting the most interesting events of my career to tell you, I naturally describe periods of comparative poverty—and there were some periods in which I was in actual want of the necessaries of life.

"But you must not suppose that I have always been poor. I have had my periods of wealth, but, as I explained to you before, it was very difficult, on account of the frequent necessity of changing my place of residence, as well as my identity, to carry over my property from one set of conditions to another. However, I have often been able to do this, and at one time I was in comfortable circumstances for nearly two hundred years. But generally, when I found myself obliged to leave a place where I had been living, for fear of suspicion concerning my age, I had to leave everything behind me.

"I will tell you a little story about one of my attempts, to provide for the future. It was toward the end of the fifteenth century, about the time that Columbus set out on his first voyage of discovery,—and you would be surprised, considering the important results of his voyage, to know how little sensation it caused in Europe,—that I devised a scheme by which I thought I might establish for myself a permanent fortune. I was then living in Genoa, and was carrying on the same business in which I am now engaged. I was a broker, a dealer in money and commercial paper. I was prosperous and well able to carry out the plan I had formed. This plan was a simple one. I would purchase jewels, things easily carried about or concealed, and which would be valuable in any country or any age; and with this idea in my mind I spent many years in collecting valuable stones and jewels, confining myself generally to rings, for I wished to make the bulk of my treasures very small when compared with their value.

"About the middle of the sixteenth century I went to Rome, and took my jewels with me. They were then a wonderfully fine collection of gems, some of them of great antiquity and value; for, in gradually gathering them together, the enthusiasm of the collector had possessed me, and I often traveled far to possess myself of a valuable jewel of which I had heard. I remained in Rome as long as I dared do so, and then prepared to set out for Egypt, which I had not visited for a long time, and where I expected to find interesting though depressing changes. I concluded, naturally enough, that it would be dangerous for me to take my treasures with me, and I could conceive of no place where it would be better to leave them than in the Eternal City. Rome was central and comparatively easy of access from any part of the world, and, moreover, was less liable to changes than any other place; so I determined to leave my treasures in Rome, and to put them somewhere where they were not likely to be disturbed by the march of improvement, by the desolations of war and conquest, or to become lost to me by the action of nature. I decided to bury them in the catacombs. With these ancient excavations I was familiar, and I believed that in their dark and mysterious recesses I could conceal my jewels, and that I could find them again when I wanted them.

"I procured a small box made of thick bronze, and in this I put all my rings and gems, and with them I inclosed several sheets of parchment, on which I had written, with the fine ink the monks used in engrossing their manuscripts, a detailed description, and frequently a history, of every one of these valuable objects. Having securely fastened up the box, I concealed it in my clothing and then made my way to the catacombs.

"It was a dark and rainy evening, and as the entrances to the catacombs were not guarded in those days, it was not difficult for me to make my way unseen into their interior. I had brought with me a tinder-box and several rushlights, and as soon as I felt secure from observation from the outside I struck a light and began my operations. Then, according to a plan I had previously made, I slowly walked along the solemn passageway which I had entered.

"My plan of procedure was a very simple one, and I had purposely made it so in order that it might be more easily remembered. I was well acquainted with the position of the opening by which I had entered. For several days I had studied carefully its relation to other points in the surrounding country. Starting from this opening, my plan was to proceed inward through the long corridor until I came to a transverse passage; to pass this until I reached another; to pass this also, and to go on until I came to a third; then I would turn to my left and proceed until I had passed two other transverse passages and reached a third; then I would again turn to my left and count the open tombs on my left hand. When I reached the third tomb I would stop. Thus there would be a series of three threes, and it was scarcely possible that I could forget that.

"At this period a great many of the tombs were open, having been despoiled even of the few bones they contained. The opening at which I stopped was quite a large one, and when I put my light inside I found it was entirely empty.

"Lighting another rush-candle, I stuck it in the bottom of the tomb, which was about four feet above the floor of the passage, and drawing my large dagger, I proceeded to dig a hole in the left-hand corner nearest the front. The earth was dry and free from stones, and I soon made a hole two feet deep, at the bottom of which I placed my box. Then I covered it up, pressing the earth firmly down into the hole. When this was entirely filled, I smoothed away the rest of the earth I had taken out, and after I finished my work, the floor of the tomb did not look as if it had been disturbed. Then I went away, reached the passage three tombs from me, turned to the right, went on until I reached the third transverse passage, then went on until I came to the entrance. It was raining heavily, but I was glad to get out into the storm."



"Now, please hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder. "When did thee get them again?"

"A great many things happened in Egypt," said Mr. Crowder, "some pleasant and some unpleasant, and they kept me there a long time. After that I went to Constantinople, and subsequently resided in Greece and in Venice. I lived very comfortably during the greater part of this period, and therefore there was no particular reason why I should go after my jewels. So it happened that, for one cause or another, I did not go back to Rome until early in the nineteenth century, and I need not assure you that almost the first place I visited was the catacombs.

"After three hundred years of absence I found the entrance, but if I had not so well noted its position in relation to certain ruins and natural objects I should not have recognized it. It was not now a wide opening through which a man might walk; it was a little hole scarcely big enough for a fox to crawl through; in fact, I do not believe there would have been any opening there at all if it had not been for the small animals living in the catacombs, which had maintained this opening for the purpose of going in and out. It was broad daylight when I found this entrance. Of course I did not attempt to do anything then, but in the night, when there was no moon, I came with a spade. I enlarged the hole, crawled through, and after a time found myself in a passageway, which was unobstructed."

"Now, hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder.

"I brought no rushlights with me this time," said Mr. Crowder. "I had a good lantern, and I walked steadily on until I came to the third transverse passage; I turned to the left, counted three more passages; I turned to the left, I walked on slowly, I examined the left-hand wall, and apparently there were no open tombs. This startled me, but I soon found that I had been mistaken. I saw some tombs which were not open, but which had been opened and were now nearly filled with the dust of ages. I stopped before the first of these; then I went on and clearly made out the position of another; then I came to the third: that was really open, although the aperture was much smaller than it had been. It did not look as I remembered it, but without hesitation I took a trowel which I had brought with me, and began to dig in the nearest left-hand corner.

"I dug and I dug until I had gone down more than two feet; then I dug on and on until, standing in the passage as I was, I could not reach down any deeper into the hole I had made. So I crawled into the tomb, crouched down on my breast, and dug down and down as far as I could reach.

"Then," said Mr. Crowder, looking at us as he spoke, "I found the box."

A great sigh of relief came from Mrs. Crowder.

"I was so afraid," said she—"I was so afraid it had sunk out of reach."

"No," said he; "its weight had probably made it settle down, and then the dust of ages, as I remarked before, had accumulated over it. That sort of thing is going on in Rome all the time. But I found my box, and, after hours and hours of wandering, I got out of the catacombs."

"How was that?" we both asked.

"I was so excited at the recovery of my treasures after the lapse of three centuries that when I turned into the first passage I forgot to count those which crossed it, and my mind became so thoroughly mixed up in regard to this labyrinth that I don't know when I would have found my way out if I had not heard a little animal—I don't know what it was —scurrying away in front of me. I followed it, and eventually saw a little speck of light. That proved to be the hole through which I had come in."

"What did thee do with the jewels?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

Her husband looked at his watch, and then held it with the face toward her.

She gave a cry of surprise, and we all went up-stairs to bed.



V

"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Crowder, the moment we had finished dinner on the next evening, "I want thee to tell us immediately what thee did with the jewels. I have been thinking about that all day; and I believe, if I had been with thee, I could have given thee some good advice, so that the money thee received for these treasures would have lasted thee a long time."

"I have thought on that subject many times," said Mr. Crowder, "not only in regard to this case, but others, and have formed hundreds of plans for carrying my possessions into another set of social conditions; but the fact of being obliged to change my identity always made it impossible for me to avail myself of the advantages of commercial paper, legal deeds, and all titles to property."

"Thee might have put thy wealth into solid gold—great bars and lumps. Those would be available in any country and in any age, and they wouldn't have had anything to do with thy identity," said his wife.

"It was always difficult for me to carry about or even conceal such golden treasures, but I have sometimes done it. However, as you are in such a hurry to hear about the jewels, I will let all other subjects drop. When I reached my lodgings in Rome, I opened the box, and found everything perfect; the writing on the sheets of parchment was still black and perfectly legible, and the jewels looked just as they did when I put them into the box."

"I cannot imagine," interrupted Mrs. Crowder, "how thee remembered what they looked like after the lapse of three hundred years."

Mr. Crowder smiled. "You forget," he said, "that since I first reached the age of fifty-three there has been no radical change in me, physical or mental. My memory is just as good now as it was when I reached my fifty-third birthday, in the days of Abraham. It is impossible for me to forget anything of importance, and I remembered perfectly the appearance of those gems. But my knowledge of such things had been greatly improved by time and experience, and after I had spent an hour or two looking over my treasures, I felt sure that they were far more valuable than they were when they came into my possession. In fact, it was a remarkable collection of precious stones, considering it in regard to its historic as well as its intrinsic value.

"I shall not attempt to describe my various plans for disposing of my treasures; but I soon found that it would not be wise for me to try to sell them in Rome. I had picked out one of the least valuable engraved stones, and had taken it to a lapidary, who readily bought it at his own valuation, and paid me with great promptness; but after he had secured it he asked me so many questions about it, particularly how I had come into possession of it, that I was very sure that he had made a wonderful bargain, and was also convinced that it would not do for me to take any more of my gems to him. Those Roman experts knew too much about antique jewels.

"I went to Naples, where I had a similar experience. Then I found it would be well for me, if I did not wish to be arrested as a thief who had robbed a museum, to endeavor to sell my collection as a whole in some other country. As a professional dealer in gems from a foreign land I would be less liable to suspicion than if I endeavored to peddle my jewels one at a time. So I determined to go to Madrid and try to sell my collection there.

"When I reached Spain I found the country in a great turmoil. This was in 1808, when Napoleon was on the point of invading Spain; but as politicians, statesmen, and military men were not in the habit of buying ancient gems, I still hoped that I might be able to transact the business which had brought me to the country. My collection would be as valuable to a museum then as at any time; for it was not supposed that the French were coming into the country to ravage and destroy the great institutions of learning and art. I made acquaintances in Madrid, and before long I had an opportunity of exhibiting my collection to a well-known dealer and connoisseur, who was well acquainted with the officers of the Royal Museum. I thought it would be well to sell them through his agency, even though I paid him a high commission.

"If I should say that this man was astounded as well as delighted when he saw my collection, I should be using very feeble expressions; for, carried away by his enthusiasm, he did not hesitate to say to me that it was the most valuable collection he had ever seen. Even if the stones had been worthless in themselves, their historic value was very great. Of course he wanted to know where I had obtained these treasures, and I informed him truthfully that I had traveled far and wide in order to gather them together. I told him the history of many of them, but entirely omitted mentioning anything which would give a clue to the times and periods when I had come into possession of them.

"This dealer undertook the sale of my jewels. We arranged them in a handsome box lined with velvet and divided into compartments, and I made a catalogue of them, copied from my ancient parchments—which would have ruined me had I inadvertently allowed them to be seen. He put himself into communication with the officers of the museum, and I left the matter entirely in his hands.

"In less than a week I became aware that I was an object of suspicion. I called on the dealer, but he was not to be seen. I found that I was shadowed by officers of the law. I wrote to the dealer, but received no answer. One evening, when I returned to my lodgings, I found that they had been thoroughly searched. I became alarmed, and the conviction forced itself upon me that the sooner I should escape from Madrid, the better for me."

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, "and leave thy jewels behind? Thee certainly did not do that!"

"Ah, my dear," replied her husband, "you do not comprehend the situation. It was very plain that the authorities of the museum did not believe that a private individual, a stranger, was likely to be the legitimate owner of these treasures. Had my case been an ordinary one I should have courted investigation; but how could I prove that I had been an honest man three hundred years before? A legal examination, not so much on account of the jewels, but because of the necessary assertion of my age, would have been a terrible ordeal.

"I hurried to the dealer's shop, but found it closed. Inquiring of a woman in a neighboring door-step, I was informed that the dealer had been arrested. I asked no more. I did not return to my lodgings, and that night I left Madrid."

I could not repress an exclamation of distress, and Mrs. Crowder cried: "Did thee really go away and leave thy jewels? Such a thing is too dreadful to think of. But perhaps thee got them again?"

"No," said Mr. Crowder; "I never saw them again, nor ever heard of them. But now that it is impossible for any one to be living who might recognize me, I hope to go to Madrid and see those gems. I have no doubt that they are in the museum."

"And I," exclaimed Mrs. Crowder—"I shall go with thee; I shall see them."

"Indeed you shall," said her husband, taking her affectionately by the hand. And then he turned to me. "You may think," said he, "that I was too timid, that I was too ready to run away from danger; but it is hard for any one but myself readily to appreciate my horror of a sentence to imprisonment or convict labor for life."

"Oh, horrible!" said his wife, with tears in her eyes. "Then thee would have despaired indeed."

"No," said he; "I should not even have had that consolation. Despair is a welcome to death. A man who cannot die cannot truly despair. But do not let us talk upon such a melancholy subject."

"No, no," cried Mrs. Crowder; "I am glad thee left those wretched jewels behind thee. And thee got away safely?"

"Oh, yes; I had some money left. I traveled by night and concealed myself by day, and so got out of Spain. Soon after I crossed the Pyrenees I found myself penniless, and was obliged to work my way."

"Poverty again!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder. "It is dreadful to hear so much of it. If thee could only have carried away with thee one of thy diamonds, thee might have cracked it up into little pieces, and thee might have sold these, one at a time, without suspicion."

"I never thought of being a vender of broken diamonds, and there is nothing suspicious about honest labor. The object of my present endeavors was to reach England, and I journeyed northward. It was nearly a month after I had entered France that I was at a little village on the Garonne, repairing a stone wall which divided a field from the road, and I assure you I was very glad to get this job.

"It was here that I heard of the near approach of Napoleon's army on its march into Spain; that the news was true was quickly proved, for very soon after I had begun my work on the wall the country to the north seemed to be filled with cavalry, infantry, artillery, baggage-wagons, and everything that pertained to an army. About noon there was a general halt, and in the field the wall of which I was repairing a body of officers made a temporary encampment.

"I paid as little apparent attention as possible to what was going on around me, but proceeded steadily with my work, although I assure you I had my eyes wide open all the time. I was thinking of stopping work in order to eat my dinner, which I had with me, when a party of officers approached me on their way to a little hill in the field. One of them stopped and spoke to me, and as he did so the others halted and stood together a little way off. The moment I looked at the person who addressed me I knew him. It was Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Then thee has seen the great Napoleon," almost whispered Mrs. Crowder.

"And very much disappointed I was when I beheld him," remarked her husband. "I had seen portraits of him, I had read and heard of his great achievements, and I had pictured to myself a hero. Perhaps my experience should have taught me that heroes seldom look like heroes, but for all that I had had my ideal, and in appearance this man fell below it. His face was of an olive color which was unequally distributed over his features; he was inclined to be pudgy, and his clothes did not appear to fit him; but for all that he had the air of a man who with piercing eyes saw his way before him and did not flinch from taking it, rough as it might be. 'You seem an old man for such work,' said he, 'but if you are strong enough to lift those stones why are you not in the army?' As he spoke I noticed that he had not the intonation of a true Frenchman. He had the accent of the foreigner that he was.



"'Sire,' said I, 'I am too old for the army, but in spite of my age I must earn my bread.' I may state here that my hair and beard had been growing since I left Madrid. For a moment the emperor regarded me in silence. 'Are you a Frenchman?' said he. 'You speak too well for a stone-mason, and, moreover, your speech is that of a foreigner who has studied French.' It was odd that each of us should have remarked the accent of the other, but I was not amused at this; I was becoming very nervous. 'Sire,' said I, 'I come from Italy.' 'Were you born there?' asked he. My nervousness increased. This man was too keen a questioner. 'Sire,' I replied, 'I was born in the country southeast of Rome.' This was true enough, but it was a long way southeast. 'Do you speak Spanish?' he abruptly asked.

"At this question my blood ran cold. I had had enough of speaking Spanish. I was trying to get away from Spain and everything that belonged to that country; but I thought it safest to speak the truth, and I answered that I understood the language. The emperor now beckoned to one of his officers, and ordered him to talk with me in Spanish. I had been in Spain in the early part of the preceding century, and I had there learned to speak the pure Castilian tongue, so that when the officer talked with me I could see that he was surprised, and presently he told the emperor that he had never heard any one who spoke such excellent Spanish. The emperor fixed his eyes upon me. 'You must have traveled a great deal,' he said. 'You should not be wasting your time with stones and mortar.' Then, turning to the officer who had spoken to me, he said, 'He understands Spanish so well that we may make him useful.' He was about to address me again, but was interrupted by the arrival of an orderly with a despatch. This he read hastily, and walked toward the officers who were waiting for him; but before he left me he ordered me to report myself at his tent, which was not far off in the field. He then walked away, evidently discussing the despatch, which he still held open in his hand.

"Now I was again plunged into the deepest apprehension and fear. I did not want to go back to Spain, not knowing what might happen to me there. Every evil thing was possible. I might be recognized, and the emperor might not care to shield any one claimed by the law as an escaped thief. In an instant I saw all sorts of dreadful possibilities. I determined to take no chances. The moment the emperor's back was turned upon me I got over the broken part of the wall and, interfered with by no one, passed quietly along the road to the house of the man who had employed me to do his mason-work, and seeing no one there,—for every window and door was tightly closed,—I walked into the yard and went to the well, which was concealed from the road by some shrubbery. I looked quickly about, and perceiving that I was not in sight of any one, I got into the well and went down to the bottom, assisting my descent by the well-rope. The water was about five feet deep, and when I first entered it, it chilled me; but nothing could chill me so much as the thought that I might be taken back into Spain, no matter by whom or for what. I must admit that I was doing then, and often had done, that which seemed very much like cowardice; but people who can die cannot understand the fear which may come upon a person who has not that refuge from misfortune.

"For the rest of the day I remained in the well, and when people came to draw water—and this happened many times in the course of the afternoon —I crouched down as much as I could; but at such times I would have been concealed by the descending bucket, even if any one had chosen to look down the well. This bucket was a heavy one with iron hoops, and I had a great deal of trouble sometimes to shield my head from it."

"I should think thee would have taken thy death of cold," said Mrs. Crowder, "staying in that cold well the whole afternoon."

"No," said her husband, with a smile; "I was not afraid of that. If I should have taken cold I knew it would not be fatal, and although the water chilled me at first, I became used to it. An hour or two after nightfall I clambered up the well-rope,—and it was not an easy thing, for although not stout, I am a heavy man,—and I got away over the fields with all the rapidity possible. I did not look back to see if the army were still on the road, nor did I ever know whether I had been searched for or had been forgotten.

"I shall not describe the rest of my journey. There is nothing remarkable about it except that it was beset with many hardships. I made my way into Switzerland and so on down the Rhine, and it was nearly seven months after I left Madrid before I reached England.

"I remained many years in Great Britain, living here and there, and was greatly interested in the changes and improvements I saw around me. You can easily understand this when I tell you it was in 1512, twenty years after the discovery of America, that I had last been in England. I do not believe that in any other part of the world the changes in three hundred years could have been more marked and impressive.

"I had never visited Ireland, and as I had a great desire to see that country, I made my way there as soon as possible, and after visiting the most noted spots of the island I settled down to work as a gardener."

"Always poor," ejaculated Mrs. Crowder, with a sigh.

"No, not always," answered her husband. "But wandering sight-seers cannot be expected to make much money. At this time I was very glad indeed to cease from roving and enjoy the comforts of a home, even though it were a humble one. The family with whom I took service was that of Maria Edgeworth, who lived with her father in Edgeworthstown."

"What!" cried Mrs. Crowder, "'Lazy Lawrence,' 'Simple Susan,' and all the rest of them? Was it that Miss Edgeworth?"

"Certainly," said he; "there never was but one Maria Edgeworth, and I don't think there ever will be another. I soon became very well acquainted with Miss Edgeworth. Her father was a studious man and a magistrate. He paid very little attention to the house and garden, the latter of which was almost entirely under the charge of his daughter Maria. She used to come out among the flower-beds and talk to me, and as my varied experience enabled me to tell her a great deal about fruits, flowers, and vegetables, she became more and more interested in what I had to tell her. She was a plain, sensible woman, anxious for information, and she lived in a very quiet neighborhood where she did not often have opportunities of meeting persons of intelligence and information. But when she found out that I could tell her so many things, not only about plants but about the countries where I had known them, she would sometimes spend an hour or two with me, taking notes of what I said.

"During the time that I was her gardener she wrote the story of 'The Little Merchants,' and as she did not know very much about Italy and Naples, I gave her most of the points for that highly moral story. She told me, in fact, that she did not believe she could have written it had it not been for my assistance. She thought well to begin the story by giving some explanatory 'Extracts from a Traveler's Journal' relative to Italian customs, but afterward she depended entirely on me for all points concerning distinctive national characteristics and the general Italian atmosphere. As she became aware that I was an educated man and had traveled in many countries, she was curious about my antecedents, but of course my remarks in that direction were very guarded.

"One day, as she was standing looking at me as I was pruning a rose-bush, she made a remark which startled me. I perfectly remember her words. 'It seems to me,' she said, 'that one who is so constantly engaged in observing and encouraging the growth and development of plants should himself grow and develop. Roses of one year are generally better than those of the year before. Then why is not the gardener better?' To these words she immediately added, being a woman of kind impulses, 'But in the case of a good gardener, such as you are, I've no doubt he does grow better, year by year.'"

"What was there startling in that little speech?" asked Mrs. Crowder. "I don't think she could have said anything less."

"I will tell you why I was startled," said her husband. "Almost those very words—mark me, almost those very words—had been said to me when I was working in the wonderful gardens of Nebuchadnezzar, and he was standing by me watching me prune a rose-bush. That Maria Edgeworth and the great Nebuchadnezzar should have said the same thing to me was enough to startle me."

To this astounding statement Mrs. Crowder and I listened with wide-open eyes.

"Yes," said Mr. Crowder; "you may think it amazing that a very ordinary remark should connect 'The Parents' Assistant' with the city of Babylon, but so it was. In the course of my life I have noticed coincidences quite as strange.

"I spent many years in the city of Babylon, but the wonderful Hanging Gardens interested me more than anything else the great city contained. At the time of which I have just spoken I was one of Nebuchadnezzar's gardeners, but not in the humble position which I afterward filled in Ireland. I had under my orders fifteen slaves, and my principal duty was to direct the labors of these poor men. These charming gardens, resting upon arches high above the surface of the ground, watered by means of pipes from the river Euphrates, and filled with the choicest flowers, shrubs, and plants known to the civilization of the time, were a ceaseless source of delight to me. Often, when I had finished the daily work assigned to me and my men, I would wander over other parts of the garden and enjoy its rare beauties.

"I frequently met Nebuchadnezzar, who for the time enjoyed his gardens almost as much as I did. When relieved from the cares of state and his ambitious plans, and while walking in the winding paths among sparkling fountains and the fragrant flowerbeds, he seemed like a very ordinary man, quiet and reflective, with very good ideas concerning nature and architecture. The latter I learned from his frequent remarks to me. I suppose it was because I appeared to be so much older and more experienced than most of those who composed his little army of gardeners that he often addressed me, asking questions and making suggestions; and it was one afternoon, standing by me as I was at work in a rose-bed, that he said the words which were spoken to me about twenty-four centuries afterward by Maria Edgeworth. Now, wasn't that enough to startle a man?"



"Startle!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, "I should have screamed. I should have thought that some one had come from the dead to speak to me. But I suppose there was nothing about Maria Edgeworth which reminded thee of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon."

"Yes, there was," replied her husband: "there was the same meditative expression of the eyes; the same reflective mood as each one began to speak, as if he and she were merely thinking aloud; the same quick, kind reference to me, as if the speaker feared that my feelings might have been hurt by a presumption that I myself had not developed and improved.

"I had good reason to remember those words of Nebuchadnezzar, for they were the last I ever heard him speak. A few days afterward I was informed by the chief gardener that the king was about to make a journey across the mountains into Media, and that he intended to establish there what would now be called an experimental garden of horticulture, which was to be devoted to growing and improving certain ornamental trees which did not flourish in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. His expedition was not to be undertaken entirely for this purpose, but he was a man who did a great many things at once, and the establishment of these experimental grounds was only one of the objects of his journey.

"The chief gardener then went on to say that the king had spoken to him about me and had said that he would take me with him and perhaps put me in charge of the new gardens.

"This mark of royal favor did not please me at all. I had hoped that I might ultimately become the chief of the Babylonian gardens, and this would have suited me admirably. It was a position of profit and some honor, and when I thought that I had lived long enough in that part of the world it would have been easy for me to make a journey into the surrounding country on some errand connected with the business of the gardens, and then quietly to disappear? But if I were to be taken into Media it might not be easy for me to get away. Therefore I did not wait to see Nebuchadnezzar again and receive embarrassing royal commands, but I went to my home that night, and returned no more to the wonderful Hanging Gardens of Babylon."

"I think thee was a great deal better off in the gardens of Maria Edgeworth," said Mrs. Crowder, "for there thee could come and go as thee pleased, and it almost makes my flesh creep when I think of thee living in company with the bloody tyrants of the past. And always in poverty and suffering, as if thee had been one of the common people, and not the superior of every man around thee! I don't want to hear anything more about the wicked Nebuchadnezzar. How long did thee stay with Maria Edgeworth?"

"About four years," he replied; "and I might have remained much longer, for in that quiet life the advance of one's years was not likely to be noticed. I am sure Miss Edgeworth looked no older to me when I left her than when I first saw her. But she was obliged to go into England to nurse her sick stepmother, and after her departure the place had no attractions for me, and I left Ireland."

"I wonder," said Mrs. Crowder, a little maliciously, "that thee did not marry her."

Her husband laughed.

"Englishwomen of her rank in society do not marry their gardeners, and, besides, in any case, she would not have suited me for a wife. For one reason, she was too homely."

"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, and she might have said more, but her husband did not give her a chance.

"I know I have talked a great deal about my days of poverty and misery, and now I will tell you something different. For a time I was the ruler of all the Russias."

"Ruler!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder and I, almost in the same breath.

"Yes," said he, "absolute ruler. And this was the way of it:

"I was in Russia in the latter part of the seventeenth century, at a time when there was great excitement in royal and political circles. The young czar Feodor had recently died, and he had named as his successor his half-brother Peter, a boy ten years of age, who afterward became Peter the Great. The late czar's young brother Ivan should have succeeded him, but he was almost an idiot. In this complicated state of things, the half-sister of Peter, the Princess Sophia, a young woman of wonderful ambition and really great abilities, rose to the occasion. She fomented a revolution; there was fighting, with all sorts of cruelties and horrors, and when affairs had quieted down she was princess regent, while the two boys, Ivan and Peter, were waiting to see what would happen next.

"She was really a woman admirably adapted to her position. She was well educated, wrote poetry, and knew how to play her part in public affairs. She presided in the councils, and her authority was without control; but she was just as bloody-minded and cruel as anybody else in Russia.

"Now, it so happened when the Princess Sophia was at the height of her power, that I was her secretary. For five or six years I had been a teacher of languages in Moscow, and at one time I had given lessons to the princess. In this way she had become well acquainted with me, and having frequently called upon me for information of one sort or another, she concluded to make me her secretary. Thus I was established at the court of Russia. I had charge of all Sophia's public papers, and I often had a good deal to do with her private correspondence, but she signed and sealed all papers of importance.

"The Prince Galitzin, who had been her father's minister and was now Sophia's main supporter in all her autocratic designs and actions, found himself obliged to leave Moscow to attend to his private affairs on his great estates, and to be absent for more than a month; and after his departure the princess depended on me more than ever. Like many women in high positions, it was absolutely necessary for her to have a man on whom she could lean with one hand while she directed her affairs with the other."

"I do not think that is always necessary," said Mrs. Crowder, "at least, in these days."

"Perhaps not," said her husband, with a smile, "but it was then. But I must get on with my story. One morning soon after Galitzin's departure, the horses attached to the royal sledge ran away just outside of Moscow. The princess was thrown out upon the hard ground, and badly dislocated her right wrist. By the time she had been taken back to the palace her arm and hand were dreadfully swollen, and it was difficult for her surgeons to do anything for her.

"I was called into the princess's room just after the three surgeons had been sent to prison. I found her in great trouble, mental as well as physical, and her principal anxiety was that she was afraid it would be a long time before she would be able to use her hand and sign and seal the royal acts and decrees. She had a certain superstition about this which greatly agitated her. If she could not sign and seal, she did not believe she would be able to rule. Any one who understood the nature of the political factions in Russia well knew that an uprising among the nobles might occur upon any pretext, and no pretext could be so powerful as the suspicion of incompetency in the sovereign. The seat of a ruler who did not rule was extremely uncertain.

"At that moment a paper of no great importance, which had been sent in to her before she went out in her sledge that morning, was lying on the table near her couch, and she was greatly worried because she could not sign it. I assured her she need not trouble herself about it, for I could attend to it. I had often affixed her initials and seal to unimportant papers.

"The princess did not object to my proposition, but this was not enough for her. She had a deep mind, and she quickly concocted a scheme by which her public business should be attended to, while at the same time it should not be known that she did not attend to it. She caused it to be given out that it was her ankle which had been injured, and not her wrist. She sent for another surgeon, and had him locked up in the palace when he was not attending to her, so that he should tell no tales. Her ladies were informed that it would be very well for them to keep silent, and they understood her. Then she arranged with me that all public business should be brought to her; that I should sign and seal in her place, and should be her agent of communication with the court.

"When this plan had been settled upon, the princess regained something of her usual good spirits. 'As I never sign my name with my toes,' she said to me, 'there is no reason why a sprained ankle should interfere with my royal functions, and, for the present, you can be my right hand.'

"This was a very fine plan, but it did not work as she expected it would. Her wrist became more and more painful, and fever set in, and on the second day, when I called upon her, I found she was in no condition to attend to business. She was irritable and drowsy. 'Don't annoy me with that paper,' she said. 'If the wool-dealers ought to have their taxes increased, increase them. You should not bring these trifles to me; but' —and now she regained for a moment her old acuteness—'remember this: don't let my administration stop.'

"I understood her very well, and when I left her I saw my course plain before me. It was absolutely necessary that the exercise of royal functions by the Princess Sophia should appear to go on in its usual way; any stoppage would be a signal for a revolution. In order that this plan should be carried out, I must act for the princess regent; I must do what I thought right, and it must be done in her name, exactly as if she had ordered it. I assumed the responsibilities without hesitation. While it was supposed I was merely the private secretary of the princess, acting as her agent and mouthpiece, I was in fact the ruler of all the Russias."

Mrs. Crowder opened her mouth as if she would gasp for breath, but she did not say anything.

"You can scarcely imagine, my dear," said he, "the delight with which I assumed the powers so suddenly thrust upon me. I set myself to work without delay, and, as I knew all about the wool-dealers' business, I issued a royal decree decreasing their taxes. Poor creatures! they were suffering enough already."

"Good for thee!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder.

"I cannot tell you of all the reforms I devised, or even those which I carried out. I knew that the fever of the princess, aggravated by the inflammation of her dislocated wrist, would continue for some time, and I bent all my energies to the work of doing as much good as I could in the vast empire under my control while I had the opportunity. And it was a great opportunity, indeed! I did not want to do anything so radical as to arouse the opposition of the court, and therefore I directed my principal efforts to the amelioration of the condition of the people in the provinces. It would be a long time before word could get back to the capital of what I had done in those distant regions. By night and by day my couriers were galloping in every direction, carrying good news to the peasants of Russia. It was remarked by some of the councilors, when they spoke of the municipal reforms I instituted, that the princess seemed to be in a very humane state of mind; but none of them cared to interfere with what they supposed to be the sick-bed workings of her conscience. So I ruled with a high hand, astonishing the provincial officials, and causing thousands of downtrodden subjects to begin to believe that perhaps they were really human beings, with some claim on royal justice and kindness.

"I fairly reveled in my imperial power, but I never forgot to be prudent. I lessened the duties and slightly increased the pay of the military regiments stationed in and about Moscow, and thus the Princess Sophia became very popular with the army, and I felt safe. I went in to see the princess every day, and several times when she was in her right mind she asked me if everything was going on well, and once when I assured her that all was progressing quietly and satisfactorily, she actually thanked me. This was a good deal for a Russian princess. If she had known how the people were thanking her, I do not know what would have happened.

"For twenty-one days I reigned over Russia. If I had been able to do it, I should have made each day a year; I felt that I was in my proper place."

"And thee was right," said Mrs. Crowder, her eyes sparkling. "I believe that at that time thee was the only monarch in the world who was worthy to reign." And with a loyal pride, as if he had just stepped from a throne, she put her hand upon his arm.

"Yes," said Mr. Crowder, "I honestly believe that I was a good monarch, and I will admit that in those days such personages were extremely scarce. So my imperial sway proceeded with no obstruction until I was informed that Prince Galitzin was hastening to Moscow, on his return from his estates, and was then within three days' journey of the capital. Now I prepared to lay down the tremendous power which I had wielded with such immense satisfaction to myself, and with such benefit, I do not hesitate to say, to the people of Russia. The effects of my rule are still to be perceived in some of the provinces of Russia, and decrees I made more than two hundred years ago are in force in many villages along the eastern side of the Volga.

"The day before Prince Galitzin was expected, I visited Sophia for the last time. She was a great deal better, and much pleased by the expected arrival of her minister. She even gave me some commands, but when I left her I did not execute them. I would not have my reign sullied by any of her mandates. That afternoon, in a royal sledge, with the royal permission, given by myself, to travel where and how I pleased, I left Moscow. Frequent relays of horses carried me rapidly beyond danger of pursuit, and so, in course of time, I passed the boundaries of the empire of Russia, over which for three weeks I had ruled, an absolute autocrat."

"Does thee know," said Mrs. Crowder, "that two or three times I expected thee to say that thee married Sophia?"

Mr. Crowder laughed. "That is truly a wild notion," said he.

"I don't think it is wild at all," she replied. "In the course of thy life thee has married a great many plain persons. In some ways that princess would have suited thee as a wife, and if thee had really married her and had become her royal consort, like Prince Albert, thee might have made a great change in her. But, after all, it would have been a pity to interfere with the reign of Peter the Great."



VI

"And what did thee do after thee got out of Russia?" asked Mrs. Crowder, the next evening.

Her husband shook his head. "No, no, my dear; we can't go on with my autobiography in that fashion. If I should take up my life step by step, there would not be time enough—" There he stopped, but I am sure we both understood his meaning. There would be plenty of time for him!

"Often and often," said Mr. Crowder, after a few minutes' silence, "have I determined to adopt some particular profession, and continue its practice wherever I might find myself; but in this I did not succeed very well. Frequently I was a teacher, but not for many consecutive years. Something or other was sure to happen to turn my energies into other channels."

"Such as falling in love with thy scholars," said his wife.

"You have a good memory," he replied. "That sometimes happened; but there were other reasons which turned me away from the paths of the pedagogue. With my widely extended opportunities, I naturally came to know a good deal of medicine and surgery. Frequently I had been a doctor in spite of myself, and as far back as the days of the patriarchs I was called upon to render aid to sick and ailing people.

"In the days when I lived in a cave and gained a reputation as a wise and holy hermit, more people came to me to get relief from bodily ailments than to ask for spiritual counsel. You will remember that I told you that I was visited at that time by Moses and Joshua. Moses came, I truly believe, on account of his desire to become acquainted with the prophet El Khoudr, of whom he had heard so much; but Joshua wanted to see me for an entirely different reason. The two remained with me for about an hour, and although Moses had no belief in me as a prophet, he asked me a great many questions, and I am sure that I proved to him that I was a man of a great deal of information. He had a keen mind, with a quick perception of the motives of others, and in every way was well adapted to be a leader of men.

"When Moses had gone away to a tent about a mile distant, where he intended to spend the night, Joshua remained, and as soon as his uncle was out of sight, he told me why he wished to see me."

"His uncle!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder.

"Certainly," said her husband; "Joshua was the son of Nun and of Miriam, and Miriam was the sister of Moses and Aaron. What he now wanted from me was medical advice. For some time he had been afflicted with rheumatism in his left leg, which came upon him after exposure to the damp and cold.

"Now, this was a very important thing to Joshua. He was a great favorite with Moses, who intended him, as we all know, to be his successor as leader of the people and of the army. Joshua was essentially a soldier; he was quiet, brave, and a good disciplinarian; in fact, he had all the qualities needed for the position he expected to fill: but he was not young, and if he should become subject to frequent attacks of rheumatism, it is not likely that Moses, who had very rigid ideas of his duties to his people, would be willing to place at their head a man who might at any time be incapacitated from taking his proper place on the field of battle. So Joshua had never mentioned his ailment to his uncle, hoping that he might be relieved of it, and having heard that I was skilled in such matters, now wished my advice.

"I soon found that his ailment was a very ordinary one, which might easily be kept under control, if not cured, and I proceeded at once to apply remedies. I will just mention that in those days remedies were generally heroic, and I think you will agree with me when I tell you how I treated Joshua. I first rubbed his aching muscles with fine sand, keeping up a friction until his skin was in a beautiful glow. Then I brought out from the back part of my cave, where I kept my medicines, a jar containing a liniment which I had made for such purposes. It was composed of oil, in which had been steeped the bruised fruit or pods of a plant very much resembling the Tabasco pepper-plant."

"Whoop!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"Yes," said Mr. Crowder, "and Joshua 'whooped' too. But it was a grand liniment, especially when applied upon skin already excited by rubbing with sand. He jumped at first, but he was a soldier, and he bore the application bravely.

"I saw him again the next day, and he assured me with genuine pleasure that every trace of the rheumatism had disappeared. I gave him some of my liniment, and also showed him some of the little pepper pods, so that he might procure them at any time in the future when he should need them.

"It was more than twenty years after this that I again met Joshua. He was then an elderly man, but still a vigorous soldier. He assured me that he had used my remedy whenever he had felt the least twinges of rheumatism, and that the disease had never interfered with the performance of his military duties.

"He was much surprised to see that I looked no older than when he had met me before. He was greatly impressed by this, and talked a good deal about it. He told me he considered himself under the greatest obligations to me for what I had done for him, and as he spoke I could see that a hope was growing within him that perhaps I might do something more. He presently spoke out boldly, and said to me that as my knowledge of medicine had enabled me to keep myself from growing old, perhaps I could do the same thing for him. Few men had greater need of protecting themselves against the advance of old age. His work was not done, and years of bodily strength were necessary to enable him to finish it.

"But I could do nothing for Joshua in this respect. I assured him that my apparent exemption from the effects of passing years was perfectly natural, and was not due to drugs or medicaments.

"Joshua lived many years after that day, and did a good deal of excellent military work; but his life was not long enough to satisfy him. He fell sick, was obliged to give up his command to his relative Caleb, and finally died, in his one hundred and twenty-eighth year."

"Which ought to satisfy him, I should say," said Mrs. Crowder.

"I have never yet met a thoroughbred worker," said Mr. Crowder, "who was satisfied to stop his work before he had finished it, no matter how old he might happen to be. But my last meeting with Joshua taught me a lesson which in those days had not been sufficiently impressed upon my mind. I became convinced that I must not allow people to think that I could live along for twenty years or more without growing older, and after that I gave this matter a great deal more attention than I had yet bestowed upon it."

"It is a pity," said Mrs. Crowder, "that thy life should have been marred by such constant anxiety."

"Yes," said he; "but this is a suspicious world, and it is dangerous for a man to set himself apart from his fellow-beings, especially if he does it in some unusual fashion which people cannot understand."

"But I hope now," said his wife, "that those days of suspicion are entirely past."

Now the conversation was getting awkward; it could not be pleasant for any one of us to talk about what the world of the future might think of Mr. Crowder when it came to know all about him, and, appreciating this, my host quickly changed the subject.

"There is a little story I have been wanting to tell you," said he, addressing his wife, "which I think would interest you. It is a love-story in which I was concerned."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Crowder, looking up quickly, "a scholar?"

"No," he answered; "not this time. Early in the fourteenth century I was living at Avignon, in the south of France. At that time I was making my living by copying law papers. You see, I was down in the world again."

Mrs. Crowder sighed, but said nothing.

"One Sunday morning I was in the Church of St. Claire, and, kneeling a little in front of me, I noticed a lady who did not seem to be paying the proper attention to her devotions. She fidgeted uneasily, and every now and then she would turn her head a little to the right, and then bring it back quickly and turn it so much in my direction that I could see the profile of her face. She was a good-looking woman, not very young, and evidently nervous and disturbed.

"Following the direction of her quick gaze when she again turned to the right, I saw a young man, apparently not twenty-five years of age, and dressed in sober black. He was also kneeling, but his eyes were steadfastly fixed upon the lady in front of me, and I knew, of course, that it was this continuous gaze which was disturbing her. I felt very much disposed to call the attention of a priest to this young man who was making one of the congregation unpleasantly conspicuous by staring at her; but the situation was brought to an end by the lady herself, who suddenly rose and went out of the church. She had no sooner passed the heavy leathern curtain of the door than the young man got up and went out after her. Interested in this affair, I also left the church, and in the street I saw the lady walking rapidly away, with the young man at a respectful distance behind her.



"I followed on the other side of the street, determined to interfere if the youth, so evidently a stranger to the lady, should accost her or annoy her. She walked steadily on, not looking behind her, and doubtless hoping that she was not followed. As soon as she reached another church she turned and entered it. Without hesitation the young man went in after her, and then I followed.

"As before, the lady knelt on the pavement of the church, and the young man, placing himself not very far from her, immediately began to stare at her. I looked around, but there was no priest near, and then I advanced and knelt not very far from the lady, and between her and her persistent admirer. It was plain enough that he did not like this, and he moved forward so that he might still get a view of her. Then I also moved so as to obstruct his view. He now fixed his eyes upon me, and I returned his gaze in such a way as to make him understand that while I was present he would not be allowed to annoy a lady who evidently wished to have nothing to do with him. Presently he rose and went out. It was evident that he saw that it was no use for him to continue his reprehensible conduct while I was present.

"I do not know how the lady discovered that her unauthorized admirer had gone away, but she did discover it, and she turned toward me for an instant and gave me what I supposed was a look of gratitude.

"I soon left the church, and I had scarcely reached the street when I found that the lady had followed me. She looked at me as if she would like to speak, and I politely saluted her. 'I thank you, kind sir,' she said, 'for relieving me of the importunities of that young man. For more than a week he has followed me whenever I go to church, and although he has never spoken to me, his steady gaze throws me into such an agitation that I cannot think of my prayers. Do you know who he is, sir?'

"I assured her that I had never seen the youth before that morning, but that doubtless I could find out all about him. I told her that I was acquainted with several officers of the law, and that there would be no difficulty in preventing him from giving her any further annoyance. 'Oh, don't do that!' she said quickly. 'I would not wish to attract attention to myself in that way. You seem to be a kind and fatherly gentleman. Can you not speak to the young man himself and tell him who I am, and impress upon his mind how much he is troubling me by his inconsiderate action?'

"As I did not wish to keep her standing in the street, we now walked on together, and she briefly gave me the facts of the case.

"Her name was Mme. de Sade: she had been happily married for two years, and never before had she been annoyed by impertinent attentions from any one; but in some manner unaccountable to her this young student had been attracted by her, and had made her the object of his attention whenever he had had the opportunity. Not only had he annoyed her at church, but twice he had followed her when she had left her house on business, thus showing that he had been loitering about in the vicinity. She had not yet spoken to her husband in the matter, because she was afraid that some quarrel might arise. But now that the good angels had caused her to meet with such a kind-hearted old gentleman as myself, she hoped that I might be able to rid her of the young man without making any trouble. Surely this student, who seemed to be a respectable person, would not think of such a thing as fighting me."

"Thee must have had a very long white beard at that time," interpolated Mrs. Crowder.

"Yes," said her husband; "I was in one of my periods of venerable age.

"I left Mme. de Sade, promising to do what I could for her, and as she thanked me I could not help wondering why the handsome young student had made her the object of his attention. She was a well-shaped, fairly good-looking woman, with fair skin and large eyes; but she was of a grave and sober cast of countenance, and there was nothing about her which indicated the least of that piquancy which would be likely to attract the eyes of a youth. She seemed to me to be exactly what she said she was—the quiet and respectable lady of a quiet and respectable household.

"In the course of the afternoon I discovered the name and residence of the young man, with whom I had determined to have an interview. His name was Francesco Petrarca, an Italian by birth, and now engaged in pursuing his studies in this place. I called upon him at his lodgings, and, fortunately, found him at home. As I had expected, he recognized me at once as the elderly person who had interfered with him at the church; but, as I did not expect, he greeted me politely, without the least show of resentment.

"I took the seat he offered me, and proceeded to deliver a lecture. I laid before him the facts of the case, which I supposed he might not know, and urged him, for his own sake, as well as for that of the lady, to cease his annoying and, I did not hesitate to state, ungentlemanly pursuit of her.

"He listened to me with respectful attention, and when I had finished he assured me that he knew even more about Mme. de Sade than I did. He was perfectly aware that she was a religious and highly estimable lady, and he did not desire to do anything which would give her a moment's sorrow. 'Then stop following her,' said I, 'and give up that habit of staring at her in such a way as to make her the object of attention to everybody around her.' 'That is asking too much,' answered Master Petrarca. 'That lady has made an impression upon my soul which cannot be removed. My will would have no power to efface her image from my constant thought. If she does not wish me to do so, I shall never speak a word to her; but I must look upon her. Even when I sleep her face is present in my dreams. She has aroused within me the spirit of poetry; my soul will sing in praise of her loveliness, and I cannot prevent it. Let me read to you some lines,' he said, picking up a piece of manuscript which was lying on the table. 'It is in Italian, but I will translate it for you.' 'No,' said I; 'read it as it is written; I understand Italian.' Then he read the opening lines of a sonnet which was written to Laura in the shadow. He read about six lines and then stopped.

"'It is not finished,' he said, 'and what I have written does not altogether satisfy me; but you can judge from what you have heard how it is that I think of that lady, and how impossible it is that I can in any way banish her from my mind, or willingly from my vision.'

"'How did you come to know that her name is Laura?' I asked. 'I found it out from the records of her marriage,' he answered.

"I talked for some time to this young man, but failed to impress him with the conviction that his conduct was improper and unworthy of him. I found means to inform Mme. de Sade of the result of my conversation with Petrarch,—as we call his name in English,—and she appeared to be satisfied that the young student would soon cease his attentions, although I myself saw no reason for such belief.

"I visited the love-lorn young man several times, for I had become interested in him, and endeavored to make him see how foolish it was—even if he looked upon it in no other light—to direct his ardent affections upon a lady who would never care anything about him, and who, even if unmarried, was not the sort of woman who was adapted to satisfy the lofty affection which his words and his verses showed him to possess.

"'There are so many beautiful women,' said I, 'any one of whom you might love, of whom you might sing, and to whom you could indite your verses. She would return your love; she would appreciate your poetry; you would marry her and be happy all your life.'

"He shook his head. 'No, no, no,' he said. 'You don't understand my nature.

"'Marriage would mean the cares of a house—food, fuel, the mending of clothes, a family—all the hard material conditions of life. No, sir! My love soars far above all that. If it were possible that Laura should ever be mine I could not love her as I do. She is apart from me; she is above me. I worship her, and for her I pour out my soul in song. Listen to this,' and he read me some lines of an unfinished sonnet to Laura in the sunlight. 'She was just coming from a shaded street into an open place I saw her, and this poem came into my heart.'

"About a week after this I was very much surprised to see Petrarch walking with his Laura, who was accompanied by her husband. The three were very amicably conversing. I joined the party, and was made acquainted with M. de Sade, and after that, from time to time, I met them together, sometimes taking a meal with them in the evening.

"I discovered that Laura's husband looked upon Petrarch very much as any ordinary husband would look upon an artist who wished to paint portraits of his wife.

"I lived for more than a year in Avignon with these good people, and I am not ashamed to say that I never ceased my endeavors to persuade Petrarch to give up his strange and abnormal attentions to a woman who would never be anything to him but a vision in the distance, and who would prevent him from living a true and natural life with one who would be all his own. But it was of no use; he went on in his own way, and everybody knows the results.

"Now, just think of it," continued Mr. Crowder. "Suppose I had succeeded in my honest efforts to do good; think of what the world would have lost. Suppose I had induced Petrarch not to come back to Avignon after his travels; suppose he had not settled down at Vaucluse, and had not spent three long years writing sonnets to Laura while she was occupied with the care of her large family of children; suppose, in a word, that I had been successful in my good work, and that Petrarch had shut his eyes and his heart to Laura; suppose—"

"I don't choose to suppose anything of the kind," said Mrs. Crowder. "Thee tried to do right, but I am glad thee did not deprive the world of any of Petrarch's poetry. But now I want thee to tell us something about ancient Egypt, and those wonderfully cultivated people who built pyramids and carved hieroglyphics. Perhaps thee saw them building the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis."

Mr. Crowder shook his head. "That was before my time," said he.

This was like an electric shock to both of us. If we had been more conversant with ancient chronology we might have understood, but we were not so conversant.

"Abraham! Isaac! Moses!" ejaculated Mrs. Crowder. "Thee knew them all, and yet Egypt was civilized before thy time! Does thee mean that?"

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Crowder. "I am of the time of Abraham, and when he was born the glories of Egypt were at their height."

"It is difficult to get these things straight in one's mind," said Mrs. Crowder. "As thee has lived so long, it seems a pity that thee was not born sooner."

"I have often thought that," said her husband; "but we should all try to be content with what we have. And now let us skip out of those regions of the dusky past. I feel in the humor of telling a love-story, and one has just come into my mind."

"Thee is so fond of that sort of thing," said his wife, with a smile, "that we will not interfere with thee."

"In the summer of the year 950," said Mr. Crowder, "I was traveling, and had just come over from France into the province of Piedmont, in northern Italy. I was then in fairly easy circumstances, and was engaged in making some botanical researches for a little book which I had planned to write on a medical subject. I will explain to you later how I came to do a great deal of that sort of thing.

"Late upon a warm afternoon I was entering the town of Ivrea, and passing a large stone building, I stopped to examine some leaves on a bush which grew by the roadside. While I was doing this, and comparing the shape and size of the leaves with some drawings I had in a book which I took from my pocket, I heard a voice behind me and apparently above me. Some one was speaking to me, and speaking in Latin. I looked around and up, but could see no one; but above me, about ten or twelve feet from the ground, there was a long, narrow slit of a window such as is seen in prisons. Again I heard the voice, and it said to me distinctly in Latin, 'Are you free to go where you choose?' It was the voice of a woman.

"As I wished to understand the situation better before I answered, I went over to the other side of the road, where I could get a better view of the window. There I saw behind this narrow opening a part of the face of a woman. This stone edifice was evidently a prison. I approached the window, and standing under it, first looking from side to side to see that no one was coming along the road, I said in Latin, 'I am free to go where I choose.'

"Then the voice above said, 'Wait!' but it spoke in Italian this time. You may be sure I waited, and in a few minutes a little package dropped from the window and fell almost at my feet. I stooped and picked it up. It was a piece of paper, in which was wrapped a bit of mortar to give it weight.

"I opened the paper and read, written in a clear and scholarly hand, these words: 'I am a most unfortunate prisoner. I believe you are an honest and true man, because I saw you studying plants and reading from a book which you carry. If you wish to do more good than you ever did before, come to this prison again after dark.'

"I looked up and said quickly, in Italian, 'I shall be here.' I was about to speak again and ask for some more definite directions, but I heard the sound of voices around a turn in the road, and I thought it better to continue my walk into the town.

"That night, as soon as it was really dark, I was again at the prison. I easily found the window, for I had noted that it was so many paces from a corner of the building; but there was no light in the narrow slit, and although I waited some time, I heard no voice. I did not dare to call, for the prisoner might not be alone, and I might do great mischief.

"My eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and it was starlight. I walked along the side of the building, examining it carefully, and I soon found a little door in the wall. As I stood for a few moments before this door, it suddenly opened, and in front of me stood a big soldier. He wore a wide hat and a little sword, and evidently was not surprised to see me. I thought it well, however, to speak, and I said: 'Could you give a mouthful of supper to a—'

"He did not allow me to finish my sentence, but putting his hand upon my shoulder, said gruffly: 'Come in. Don't you waste your breath talking about supper.' I entered, and the door was closed behind me. I followed this man through a stone passageway, and he took me to a little stone room. ''Wait here!' he said, and he shut me in. I was in pitch-darkness, and had no idea what was going to happen next. After a little time I saw a streak of light coming through a keyhole; then an inner door opened, and a young woman with a lamp came into the room."

"Now does the love-story begin?" asked his wife.

"Not yet," said Mr. Crowder. "The young woman looked at me, and I looked at her. She was a pretty girl with black eyes. I did not express my opinion of her, but she was not so reticent. 'You look like a good old man,' she said. 'I think you may be trusted. Come!' Her speech was provincial, and she was plainly a servant. I followed her. 'Now for the mistress,' said I to myself."

"Thee may have looked like an old man," remarked Mrs. Crowder, "but thee did not think like one."

Her husband laughed. "I mounted some stone steps, and was soon shown into a room where stood a lady waiting for me. As the light of the lamp carried by the maid fell upon her face, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful woman. Her dress, her carriage, and her speech showed her to be a lady of rank. She was very young, scarcely twenty, I thought.

"This lady immediately began to ask me questions. She had perceived that I was a stranger, and she wanted to know where I came from, what was my business, and as much as I could tell her of myself. 'I knew you were a scholar,' she said, 'because of your book, and I believe in scholars.' Then briefly she told me her story and what she wanted of me.

"She was the young Queen Adelheid, the widow of King Lothar, who had recently died, and she was then suffering a series of harsh persecutions from the present king, Berengar II, who in this way was endeavoring to force her to marry his son Adalbert. She hated this young man, and positively refused to have anything to do with him.

"This charming and royal young widow was bright, intelligent, and had a mind of her own; it was easy to see that. She had formed a scheme for her deliverance, and she had been waiting to find some one to help her carry it out. Now, she thought I was the man she had been looking for. I was elderly, apparently respectable, and she had to trust somebody.

"This was her scheme. She was well aware that unless some powerful friend interfered in her behalf she would be obliged to marry Adalbert, or remain in prison for the rest of her life, which would probably be unduly shortened. Therefore she had made up her mind to appeal to the court of the Emperor Otto I of Germany, and she wanted me to carry a letter to him.

"I stood silent, earnestly considering this proposition, and as I did so she gazed at me as if her whole happiness in this world depended upon my decision. I was not long in making up my mind on the subject. I told her that I was willing to help her, and would undertake to carry a letter to the emperor, and I did not doubt, from what I had heard of this noble prince, that he would come to her deliverance. But I furthermore assured her that the moment it became known that the emperor was about to interfere in her behalf, she would be in a position of great danger, and would probably disappear from human sight before relief could reach her. In that prison she was utterly helpless, and to appeal for help would be to bring down vengeance upon herself. The first thing to do, therefore, was to escape from this prison, and get to some place where, for a time at least, she could defend herself against Berengar, while waiting for Otto to take her under his protection.