I had scarcely finished speaking when Hannaniah, looking out of one of the tiny panes of thick greenish glass of the kitchen window, spied the subject of our conversation crossing the yard, and at my suggestion he beckoned him to approach the homestead. Mrs Davies, too, who had paused from her usual routine of scrubbing, was deeply interested, and in her native vernacular expressed her admiration for the powers of the Saxon gentleman who could speak the language of the blacks, for in her simple philosophy all dark-skinned foreigners owned but one lingo, whilst a multiplicity of tongues was a special privilege reserved for the Aryan race. Hannaniah was no doubt more enlightened on such a point, but I fancy he had no fixed or correct views concerning Indians and negroes; it would therefore in no way be surprising to him, a good bilinguist, that anyone who had lived in the East like myself should understand the language of a wandering Oriental. He left the room, and I followed him into the soft breeze and the mellow October sunshine which was reviving Mary's rain-sodden dahlias round which the Red Admirals were hovering with brilliant if somewhat tattered wings. The figure of the newly hired labourer could be observed slowly descending the long yard, for he was encumbered with a bundle of clover under his left arm, whilst his right side was heavily weighed down by a bucket of some provender for the calves. His garments formed a sort of ugly compromise between the costumes of East and West--a turban of soiled mauve muslin, a shabby threadbare brown coat and loose baggy trousers of canvas such as Levantine sailors affect. In this cheap and unattractive garb I quickly recognised Fajal, a leading member of the hierarchy of Meleager, and after Anzoni the most trustworthy and agreeable personage of all that august body to my mind. On our appearance in the yard the new servant halted a moment, placed the dirty bucket on the ground, and made an obeisance equally to Mr Davies and myself. As he bent before us in his squalid disguise, with his delicate shapely hands encrusted with barley-meal, and with his shoddy boots all caked with filthy mud, I reflected and marvelled for a second or two on the inexorable sense of duty or responsibility which could compel such a man as Fajal, whose pedigree could easily vie with that of a Habsburg or a Colonna, to stoop to such abasement and to face such vicissitudes. Yet though he bent ragged and grimy and cringing before us, I could still detect the noble fruit concealed within the rugged husk, albeit such a gift of discrimination was wholly beyond the range of the farmer's blunter powers of perception and inferior knowledge of humanity. I addressed a few commonplace phrases in Meleagrian to Fajal, who replied with discreet modesty, only in his last sentence bidding me seek him in the adjacent byre as soon as it was feasible. Mr Davies standing by was certainly impressed with the fluency of