disposition, his frank and persuasive humour would have finally removed it. "How the devil came you here?" ejaculated the stranger, putting aside the lute, which hung suspended from his neck by a diamond chain. "You are deeply in love with the dead, cavalier, to select such a place as this for the haunt of your meditative dreams." "Your Turkish cemeteries," I replied, "possess an indisputable superiority over the sepulchral gardens of Europe. To wander through these bowers of rose and cypress trees at this beautiful hour of night, enchants the heart with imaginings that soar above our earthly sphere. But were you inspired by the same lofty feelings when I first saw you?" "Not I, cavalier; I came to these charnel vaults to exchange a kiss or two on the lovely lips of the Pacha's daughter, though, the plague to my whiskers! if the gloomy Mahometans were in possession of my secret, I should be impaled before sunrise, and my blue-eyed Sultana would doubtless expiate the crime of "lighting up her heart" at the shrine of affection, by being closed in a sack and thrown into the lake. But, I felt persuaded, there was something _English_, in the tones of your voice. Did you forsake Old Albion for the sultry, pestilential deserts of these infernal realms?" "Not absolutely; my travels would have terminated at Constantinople--at the Gem of Turkish Cities--if the Sultan had not commanded me to convey a message to the Pacha of Aleppo, relative to the punishment of some refractory rebels." "Oh! oh! then you will remain here. But the time of my departure is rapidly approaching, for when the beams of to-morrow's sun again illumine the earth, I shall make my best bow to Aleppo--to its angelic Peris, and retire with my beautiful Sultana--the charm and grace of this eastern fairy land! But _diable!_ you love a story, and I will tell you of every circumstance combined with my singular adventure for a wife. Sit down, cavalier, and lend an ear to my romance." I complied; and the associate of my solitude amused me by exhibiting his humorous loquacity.