That there were plenty of impostors about, and that Mr. Villiers had ample ground for being suspicious of casual strangers professing to have Turkish military experience, I soon discovered for myself. I happened to be travelling up to Scotland a couple of days afterwards, when a gentlemanly looking individual got into the smoking carriage with me, and we fell to chatting upon the current topics of the day. The stranger began to interest me vastly, when he turned the conversation dexterously into a discussion of the Russo-Turkish campaign, and informed me that, though an Englishman, he had served in the artillery under Osman Pasha, and had been present in Plevna during the siege. I let him go on for fully a quarter of an hour recounting his apocryphal exploits, and then I thought it was time to speak. "Well, sir," I said, "it is a most extraordinary thing to think that you could have told that story to any other man in England except myself, and he might have believed you." I gave him my name, and told him that I knew all the artillery officers in Plevna, and that he certainly was not one of them. Never was an unfortunate _raconteur_ so non-plussed. He threw up the sponge at once, and admitted that his story was a fabrication suggested to him by the fact that he had once made a holiday trip in Turkey. And now the close of the book is reached; but before the last word is written, I should like to express my profound admiration for the soldierly qualities of the rank and file of the Turkish army, with whom I lived on terms of intimate companionship for nearly two years. Courageous in misfortune, uncomplaining under the most awful suffering, good-humoured in every situation, the Turkish troops, both officers and men, showed throughout all the campaign the temper of true heroes. I need hardly say that for me it is deeply painful to think that the men whom I almost idealized, the men with whom I fought and suffered, with whom I tasted the glory of victory and the bitterness of defeat, should lie under the accusation of the atrocities which we must believe have been committed in 1896, not only in Armenia, but also in Constantinople. Yet through the black cloud that hangs over the Turkish Empire to-day I can still discern the distant stars; for I can look back with honest pride to the high sense of honour, the dauntless courage, the loyalty and true patriotism of those who were my comrades in arms in the earlier and brighter days. INDEX. ABDUL KERIM PASHA, 49, 99. _Achilles_, 309, 420. Adil Pasha, 60, 183. Adrianople, 301. Ahmed Pasha, 106. Ahmet, 22, 185, 189, 256, 258; his return to the ranks, 297. Ahmet Bey, 48; captures a Servian, 49. Ak Palanka, 30. _Alexandra_, 309. Alexinatz, 30, 34. Alix, Colonel, 308. Alouf Pasha, 113. Anisimoff, Captain, 378. Arab regiment, cases of malingering, 145; remedy, 147. Ararat, Mount, 365. Archæological curiosities, 365. Archbishop, Catholic Armenian, of Erzeroum, 364.