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poetry to the voices of sorrow and regret, he was right, methinks, in feeling these to be among the most effectual of lyrical values. The word Irreparable suggests a yearning as infinite as that for the Unattainable, under the spell of which Richter fled as from a passion too intense to bear. Yes; the sweetest sound in music is "a dying fall." "Mimnermus in Church" weighs the preacher's adjuration, and makes an impetuous reply:

Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away!
All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why

I clasp them is because they die.

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Among priceless lyrics from the Greek anthology to our own, those of joy and happy love and hope are fair indeed, but those which haunt the memory turn upon the escape. not the retention of that which is "rich and strange." Their charm is poignant, yet ineffable. The consecration of such enduring melody to regret for the beloved, whose swift, inexplicable transits leave us dreaming of all they might have been, is the voice of our desire that their work, even though perfecting in some unknown region, may not wholly fail upon earth-that their death may not be quite untimely.

How subtile the effect, even in its English rendering, of Villon's "Ballade of Dead Ladies"-"Where are the snows of yester-year?" Are any lyrics more captivating than our English dirges: the song dirges of the dramatists -"Come away, come away, Death," "Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,"" Full fathom five thy father lies," and the like? Collins's "Dirge for Fidele," a mere piece of studied art, acquires its beauty from a flawless treatment of the master-theme. Add to such art the force of a profound emotion, and you have Wordsworth in his more impassioned lyrical strains : "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," "A slumber did my spirit steal," and the stanzas on Ettrick's "poet dead." Landor's "Rose Aylmer" owes its spell to a consummate union of nature and art in recognition of the unavailability of all that is rarest and most lustrous:

Ah, what avails the sceptred race!

Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

Of memories and of sighs, yet not of pain, for such vigils have a rapture of their own. The perished have at least the gift of immortal love, remembrance, tears, and at our festivals the unseen guests are most apparent. Thus the tuneful plaint of sorrow, the tears "wild with all regret," the touch that consecrates, the preciousness of that which lives but in memory and echo and dreams, move the purest spirit of poesy to sweep the perfect minstrel lute. To such a poet as Robert Bridges the note of evanescence is indeed the note of charm, and in choosing the symbols of it for the imagery of his most ravishing song, he knows that thus, and thus most surely, it shall haunt us with its immortality:

I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents
A honeymoon delight
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour :-
My song be like a flower!

I have loved airs that die Before their charm is writ Along a liquid sky

Trembling to welcome it. Notes that, with pulse of fire, Proclaim the spirit's desire, Then die and are nowhere: My song be like an air!

Die, song, die like a breath
And wither as a bloom :
Fear not a flowery death,

Fear not an empty tomb!
Fly with delight, fly hence!
'T was thine love's tender sense
To feast, now on thy bier
Beauty shall shed a tear.

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

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XXI.

THE NAULAHKA.1

A STORY OF WEST AND EAST.

BY RUDYARD KIPLING AND WOLCOTT BALESTIER.

O sit still, and to keep sitting still, is the first lesson that the young jockey must learn. Tarvin was learning it in bitterness of spirit. For the sake of his town, for the sake of his love, and, above all, for the sake of his love's life, he must go. The town was waiting, his horse was saddled at the door, but his love would not come. He must sit still.

The burning desert wind blew through the open veranda as remorselessly as Sitabhai's hate. Looking out, he saw nothing but the city asleep in the sunshine and the wheeling kites above it. Yet when evening fell, and a man might be able by bold riding to escape to the railway, certain shrouded figures would creep from the walls and take up their position within easy gunshot of the rest-house. One squatted at each point of the compass, and between them, all night long, came and went a man on horseback. Tarvin could hear the steady beat of the hoofs as he went his rounds, and the sound did not give him fresh hope. But for Kate-but for Kate, he repeated to himself, he would have been long since beyond reach of horse or bullet. The hours were very slow, and as he sat and watched the shadows grow and shorten, it seemed to him, as it had seemed so often before, that this and no other was the moment that Topaz would choose to throw her chances from her.

He had lost already, he counted, eight-andforty precious hours, and, so far as he could see, the remainder of the year might be spent in an equally unprofitable fashion.

danger about her path as well as his own, and she had decided to face that danger. For her courage and devotion he loved her; but her obstinacy made him grit his teeth. There was but one grimly comical element in the terrible jumble. What would the King say to Sitabhai when he discovered that she had lost the Luck of the State? In what manner would she veil that loss; and above all, into what sort of royal rage would she fall? Tarvin shook his head meditatively. "It's quite bad enough for me," he said, "just about as bad as it can possibly be made; but I have a wandering suspicion that it may be unwholesome for Juggut. Yes; I can spare time to be very sorry for Juggut. My fat friend, you should have held straight that first time, outside the city walls."

He rose and looked out into the sunlight, wondering which of the scattered vagrants by the roadside might be an emissary from the palace. A man lay apparently asleep by the side of his camel near the road that ran to the city. Tarvin stepped out casually from the veranda, and saw, as soon as he was fairly in the open, that the sleeper rolled round to the other side of his beast. He strolled forward a few paces. The sunlight glinted above the back of the camel on something that shone like silver. Tarvin marched straight toward the glitter, his pistol in his hand. The man, when Tarvin came up to him, was buried in innocent slumber. Under the fold of his garment peered the muzzle of a new and very clean rifle.

"Looks as if Sitabhai was calling out the militia, and supplying them with outfits from. her private armory. Juggut's gun was new, too," said Tarvin, standing over the sleeper. "But this man knows more about guns than Juggut. Hi!" He stooped down and stirred the man up with the muzzle of his revolver. "I'm afraid I must trouble you for that gun. And tell the lady to drop it, will you? It won't pay."

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Meantime Kate lay exposed to every imaginable danger. Sitabhai was sure to assume that he had wrested the necklace from her for the sake of the "frail white girl"; she had said as much on the dam. It was for Kate's sake, in a measure; but Tarvin reflected bitterly that an Oriental had no sense of proportion, and, like the snake, strikes first at that which is nearest. And Kate? How in the world was he to "Now, I wonder how many more of her army explain the case to her? He had told her of I shall have to disarm," said Tarvin, retracing 1 Copyright, 1891, by Rudyard Kipling and Wolcott Balestier. All rights reserved.

The man understood the unspoken eloquence of the pistol, and nothing more. He gave up his gun sullenly enough, and moved away, lashing his camel spitefully.

his steps, the captured gun over his shoulder. "I wonder-no; I won't believe that she would dare to do anything to Kate. She knows enough of me to be sure that I'd blow her and her old palace into to-morrow. If she 's half the woman she pretends to be, she 'll reckon with me before she goes much further."

In vain he attempted to force himself into this belief. Sitabhai had shown him what sort of thing her mercy might be, and Kate might have tasted it ere this. To go to her now-to be maimed or crippled at the least if he went to her now-was impossible. Yet he decided that he would go. He returned hastily to Fibby, whom he had left not three minutes before flicking off flies in the sunshine at the back of the rest-house. But Fibby lay on his side groaning piteously, hamstrung and dying.

Tarvin could hear his groom industriously polishing a bit round the corner, and when the man came up in response to his call he flung himself down by the side of the horse, howling with grief.

"An enemy hath done this—an enemy hath done this!" he clamored. "My beautiful brown horse, that never did harm except when he kicked through fullness of meat! Where shall I find a new service if I let my charge die thus?" "I wish I knew! I wish I knew!" said Tarvin, puzzled, and almost despairing. "There'd be a bullet through one black head, if I were just a little surer. Get up, you! Fibby, old man, I forgive you all your sins. You were a good old boy, and-here 's luck."

The blue smoke enveloped Fibby's head for an instant, the head fell like a hammer, and the good horse was out of his pain. The groom, rising, rent the air with grief, till Tarvin kicked him out of the pickets and bade him be gone. Then it was noticeable that his cries ceased suddenly, and, as he retreated into his mudhouse to tie up his effects, he smiled, and dug up some silver from a hole under his bedstead. Tarvin, dismounted, looked east, west, north, south for help, as Sitabhai had looked on the dam. A wandering gang of gipsies with their lean bullocks and yelping dogs turned an angle of the city wall, and rested like a flock of unclean birds by the city gate. The sight in itself was not unusual, but city regulations forbade camping within a quarter of a mile of the walls. "Some of the lady's poor relatives, I suppose. They have blocked the way through the gate pretty well. Now, if I were to make a bolt of it to the missionary's, they'd have me, would n't they?" muttered Tarvin to himself. "On the whole, I 've seen prettier professions than trading with Eastern queens. They don't seem to understand the rules of the game."

At that moment a cloud of dust whirled ough the gipsy camp, as the escort of the

Maharaj Kunwar, clearing the way for the barouche, scattered the dark band to the left and right. Tarvin wondered what this might portend. The escort halted with the customary rattle of accoutrements at the rest-house door, the barouche behind them. A single trooper, two hundred yards or more in the rear, lifted his voice in a deferential shout as he pursued the carriage. He was answered by a chuckle from the escort, and two shrill screams of delight from the occupants of the barouche.

A child whom Tarvin had never before seen stood upright in the back of the carriage, and hurled a torrent of abuse in the vernacular at the retreating trooper. Again the escort laughed. "Tarvin Sahib! Tarvin Sahib!" piped the Maharaj Kunwar. "Come and look at us."

For a moment Tarvin fancied this a fresh device of the enemy; but reassured by the sight of his old and trusted ally, the Maharaj, he stepped forward.

"Prince," he said, as he took his hand, “you ought not to be out."

"Oh, it is all right," said the young man hastily, though his pale little face belied it. “I gave the order, and we came. Miss Kate gives me orders; but she took me over to the palace, and there I give orders. This is Umr Singh my brother, the little Prince; but I shall be king."

The second child raised his eyes slowly, and looked full at Tarvin. The eyes and the low, broad forehead were those of Sitabhai, and the mouth closed firmly over the little pearl-like teeth, as his mother's mouth had closed in the conflict on the Dungar Talao.

"He is from the other side of the palace," answered the Maharaj, still in English. "From the other side, where I must not go. But when I was in the palace I went to him,-ha! ha! Tarvin Sahib,- and he was killing a goat. Look! His hands are all red now."

Umr Singh opened a tiny palm at a word in the vernacular from the Maharaj, and flung it outward at Tarvin. It was dark with dried blood, and a bearded whisper ran among the escort. The commandant turned in his saddle, and, nodding at Tarvin, muttered, “ Sitabhai kibeta!" Tarvin caught the first word, and it was sufficient for him. Providence had sent him help out of a clear sky. He framed a plan instantly.

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"But how did you come here, you young imps?" he demanded.

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'Oh, there are only women in the palace yonder, and I am a Rajput and a man. He cannot speak any English at all," he added, pointing to his companion; "but when we have played together I have told him about you, Tarvin Sahib, and about the day you picked me out of my saddle, and he wished to come

too, to see all the things you show me, so I gave the order very quietly, and we came out of the little door together. And so we are here. Salaam bolo, baba," he said patronizingly to the child at his side, and the child slowly and gravely raised his hand to his forehead, still gazing with fixed, incurious eyes on the stranger. Then he whispered something that made the Maharaj Kunwar laugh. "He says," said the Maharaj Kunwar, "that you are not so big as he thought. His mother told him that you were stronger than any man, but some of these troopers are bigger than you."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked

Tarvin.

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"Show him your gun, and how you shoot rupees, and what you do that makes horses quiet when they kick, and all those things." All right," said Tarvin. "But I can't show them here. Come over to Mr. Estes's with me." "I do not like to go there. My monkey is dead. And I do not think Kate would like to see us. She is always crying now. She took me up to the palace yesterday, and this morning I went to her again; but she would not see

me."

Tarvin could have hugged the child for the blessed assurance that Kate at least still lived. "Is n't she at the hospital, then? he asked thickly.

"Oh, the hospital has all gone phut. There are no women now. They all ran away." "No!" cried Tarvin. "Say that again, little man. What for?"

"Devils," said the Maharaj Kunwar, briefly. "What do I know? It was some women's talk. Show him how you ride, Tarvin Sahib."

Again Umr Singh whispered to his companion, and put one leg over the side of the barouche. "He says he will ride in front of you, as I told him I did," interpreted the Prince. "Gurdit Singh, dismount!"

A trooper flung himself out of the saddle at the word, and stood to attention at the horse's head. Tarvin, smiling to himself at the perfection of his opportunity, said nothing, but leaped into the saddle, picked Umr Singh out of the barouche, and placed him carefully before him. "Sitabhai would be rather restless if she could see me," he murmured to himself, as he tucked his arm round the lithe little figure. "I don't think there will be any Juggutting while I carry this young man in front of me."

As the escort opened to allow Tarvin to take his place at their head, a wandering priest, who had been watching the episode from a little distance, turned and shouted with all the strength of his lungs across the plain in the direction of the city. The cry was taken up by unseen voices, passed on to the city walls, and died away on the sands beyond.

VOL. XLIV.-50.

Umr Singh smiled as the horse began to trot, and urged Tarvin to go faster. This the Maharaj forbade. He wished to see the sight comfortably from his seat in the barouche. As he passed the gipsy camp, men and women threw themselves down on the sands, crying, “Jai! Jungle da badshah jai!" and the faces of the troopers darkened.

"That means," cried the Maharaj Kunwar, "Victory to the king of the desert.' I have no money to give them. Have you, Tarvin Sahib ?”

In his joy at being now safely on his way to Kate, Tarvin could have flung everything he possessed to the crowd-almost the Naulahka itself. He emptied a handful of copper and small silver among them, and the cry rose again, but bitter laughter was mingled with it, and the gipsy folk called to one another, mocking. The Maharaj Kunwar's face turned scarlet. He leaned forward, listening for an instant, and then shouted: "By Indur, it is for him! Scatter their tents!" At a wave of his hand the escort, wheeling, plunged through the camp in line, driving the light ash of the fires up in clouds, slashing the donkeys with the flat of their swords until they stampeded, and carrying away the frail brown tents on the butts of their reversed lances.

Tarvin looked on contentedly at the dispersal of the group, which he knew would have stopped him if he had been alone.

Umr Singh bit his lip. Then, turning to the Maharaj Kunwar, he smiled, and put forward from his belt the hilt of his sword in sign of fealty.

"It is just, my brother," he said in the vernacular. "But I"-here he raised his voice a little-"would not drive the gipsy folk too far. They always return."

"Aye," cried a voice from the huddled crowd, watching the wreck of the camp, significantly; "gipsies always return, my King."

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"So does a dog," said the Maharaj, between his teeth. "Both are kicked. Drive on." And a pillar of dust came to Estes's house, Tarvin riding in safety in the midst of it.

Telling the boys to play until he came out, he swept into the house, taking the steps two at a time, and discovered Kate in a dark corner of the parlor with a bit of sewing in her hand. As she looked up he saw that she was crying.

"Nick!" she exclaimed voicelessly. "Nick!" He had stopped, hesitating on the threshold; she dropped her work, and rose breathless. "You have come back! It is you! You are alive!"

Tarvin smiled, and held out his arms. "Come and see!" She took a step forward. “Oh, I was afraid ---” "Come!"

She went doubtfully toward him. He caught achieved an instantaneous change of front, and her fast, and held her in his arms. met her, smiling.

For a moment she let her head lie on his breast. Then she looked up. "This is n't what I meant," she protested.

"Oh, don't try to improve on it,” Tarvin said hastily.

"She tried to poison me. I was sure when I heard nothing that she must have killed you. I fancied horrible things."

"Poor child! And your hospital has gone wrong! You have been having a hard time. But we will change all that. We must leave as soon as you can get ready. I've nipped her claws for a moment; I 'm holding a hostage. But we can't keep that up forever. We must get away."

"We?" she repeated feebly.

"Well, do you want to go alone?"

"Certainly," he said; "I have been working it as a blind.”

"A blind?" she repeated. "To cover what?" "You."

"What do you mean?" she inquired, with a look in her eyes which made him uncomfortable.

"The Indian government allows no one to remain in the state without a definite purpose. I could n't tell Colonel Nolan that I had come courting you, could I?"

"I don't know. But you could have avoided taking the Maharajah's money to carry out this- this plan. An honest man would have avoided that."

"Oh, look here!" exclaimed Tarvin. "How could you cheat the King into think

She smiled as she released herself. "I want ing that there was a reason for your work? how you to."

"And you?"

"I'm not worth thinking of. I have failed. Everything I meant to do has fallen about me in a heap. I feel burnt out, Nick-burnt out!"

"All right. We'll put in new works, and launch you on a fresh system. That's what I want. There shall be nothing to remind you that you ever saw Rhatore, dear."

"It was a mistake," she said.
"What?"

"Everything. My coming. My thinking I could do it. It's not a girl's work. It's my work, perhaps; but it's not for me. I have given it up, Nick. Take me home."

Tarvin gave an unbecoming shout of joy, and folded her in his arms again. He told her that they must be married at once, and start that night, if she could manage it; and Kate, dreading what might befall him, assented doubtfully. She spoke of preparations; but Tarvin said that they would prepare after they had done it. They could buy things at Bombay-stacks of things. He was sweeping her forward with the onrush of his extempore plans when she said suddenly: "But what of the dam, Nick? You can't leave that "

"Shucks!" exclaimed Tarvin, heartily. "You don't suppose there's any gold in the old river, do you?"

She recoiled quickly from his arms, staring at him in accusation and reproach.

"Do you mean that you have always known that there was no gold there?" she asked.

Tarvin pulled himself together quickly, but not so quickly that she did not catch the confession in his eye.

"I see you have," she said coldly.
Tarvin measured the crisis which had sud-
my descended on him out of the clouds; he

could you let him give you the labor of a thousand men? how could you take his money? O Nick!"

He gazed at her for a vacant and hopeless minute. "Why, Kate," he exclaimed, "do you know you are talking of the most stupendous joke the Indian empire has witnessed since the birth of time?”

This was pretty good, but it was not good enough. He plunged for a stronger hold as she answered, with a perilous little note of breakdown in her voice, " You make it worse."

"Well, your sense of humor never was your strongest point, you know, Kate." He took the seat next her, leaned over, and took her hand, as he went on. "Does n't it strike you as rather amusing, though, after all, to rip up half a state to be near a very small little girl a very sweet, very extra lovely little girl, but still a rather tiny little girl in proportion to the size of the Amet Valley? Come, does n't it?"

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