From this stronghold Corsar Beg sallies forth, pillaging the land and massacring the defenceless people; and if he lights upon any pursuing host, he instantly turns tail with his Spahis and Bedouins; and whilst he flies to his stronghold along mountain paths, on mules laden with booty, his Timariots, who cover his retreat, throw barricades up on the narrow roads, and stone to death all who venture to follow them into the dark gorges. Sometimes, however, he permits the pursuers to come right up to the fortress walls, and while they are popping away at the rocky bastions with the little half-pound mortars which they have dragged up thither after incalculable exertions, and think that now they will starve him out at last, he plays a practical joke upon them by somehow or other (perhaps through subterranean ways), making a sortie from his stronghold, and robbing and burning behind the backs of the besiegers. Every attempt to capture, surprise, or blockade him has been in vain. The inhabitants of the surrounding villages have begun to migrate into more distant regions for fear of their terrible neighbour. After the battle of St. Gothard, in which the Turkish general lost the fight and twelve thousand men against the Imperial and Hungarian forces, a twenty years' armistice was concluded between the Porte, the Emperor, and the Prince of Transylvania, which left the Turks in possession of all the fortresses which they had built or captured in Hungary. The lords of these fortresses now continued the war on their own account, and pillaged and destroyed whenever and wherever they had a chance. The Sultan was too far off to interfere in each individual case. All he could do was to authorize the complainants to capture the peace-breakers if they could, and deal with them as they chose. * * * * * In the twilight hour of a sultry summer evening, when the heat, compressed among the rocks during the day, made the atmosphere so heavy and stifling that sound only travelled with difficulty, we see two shapes hastening towards the same point from different directions. One is a man in Hungarian costume, with a low forehead and sharp, squinting eyes, whose oblique gaze seems expressly made to disconcert whomsoever he looks upon. The other is an old Turkish woman, with a warty chin covered with sprouting bristles. The sleeves of her long striped kaftan hang slovenly down, and her dirty turban gives you the impression that she has slept in it for weeks together. The trysting-place which the two shapes are cautiously making for is a cavern covered with bushes. Both shapes glide, at the same time, into the cavern, from the dark depths of which they can see the fortress without being seen themselves. The old woman, with a hideous smile, whispers something in the man's ear. "Are you quite sure?" inquired the squinter, with a searching look. "So certain that I make bold to claim one-half of the promised reward in advance."