would have got over anything of the kind in an hour or two, but you are much more highly strung."

Mabel was vaguely aware that the comparison was intended to be all in her favor, but she could not agree that the advantage was on her side, and she changed the subject hastily. "I don't know how to thank you for what you did. Every time I think of that evening I feel more and more how grateful I ought to be. And I am, indeed, but I can't say what I should like."

Mr. Burgrave raised his hand. "Please don't, Miss North, or you will make me more miserable than I am already. How can I forget that I did nothing to help you? Mr. Anstruther had that happiness, while I was lying on the ground under my horse."

"But you tried-you did all you could -you were so terribly hurt," protested Mabel.

"Yes, and that is my only comfort. I was hurt, and therefore I am here. No, on second thoughts, I don't even envy Anstruther. He did the work, but I have basely annexed the reward. To have rescued you was enough for him. I, who was unsuccessful, am consoled by finding myself under the same roof with you for a fortnight. That is enough for me."

"How nice of you to say so!" Mabel

rose.

"Then I can leave you quite happily, and go and help Georgia?"

"Miss North, you are not going already? What have I said to drive you out of the room? Do you want me to pine away in melancholy madness? After all, I did try to rescue you, as you were kind enough to say just now, but it will need your constant society and conversation to keep me from brooding over my failure."

"I'm afraid my society won't be very cheerful," said Mabel resuming her seat with a sigh. "You see I can't help feeling that what happened was a good

deal my fault. If I had only told what I knew-”

"Well?" asked Mr. Burgrave anxiously as she paused.

"Ah, but if I had you would not have believed it," was the unexpected response, "any more than you would now."

"Do you think I should be so rude as to question your word, Miss North?" "You will when I tell you I know that the men who tried to carry me off were agents of Bahram Khan's."

"You have evidence to support this very serious allegation, I presume? Are you able to identify the men?"

"I suppose so; I haven't tried. But, Mr. Burgrave, I am going to tell you something that only my sister-in-law knows-not even my brother, for I wouldn't let her say anything to him. Bahram Khan did want to-to marry me."

"What?" cried the Commissioner, starting up again; "you don't mean to say that he has ever ventured to-to suggest such a thing to you?" Rage and distrust strove for the mastery in his voice.

"Oh, no; he has never said anything to me, but the day I was at Dera Gul the women talked of nothing else."

"Oh, the women!" Mr. Burgrave spoke quite calmly again, and with evident relief. "You must remember that Bahram Khan is a good deal more advanced in his notions than the other chiefs of the province, and would like to imitate our ways with regard to ladies-English ladies, I mean. That is just the sort of thing that native women can't understand. Any polite attention he might offer you would be misconstrued by them into a cause for violent jealousy. Their mistake made things extremely unpleasant for you at the moment, no doubt, but you need not torment yourself with thinking that he had any such preposterous idea in his head."

Mr. Burgrave did not actually say that a lady accustomed to universal admiration was liable to perceive it even where it did not exist, but this was what Mabel understood his slightly repressive tone to imply, and she grew crimson.

"Why don't you say that I imagined the whole thing?" she demanded. "It's not an experience I am proud of, I assure you. I told it you purely in the hope that it might open your eyes a little, but since you prefer to regard Bahram Khan as an interesting martyr-"

"Pray, don't mistake me, Miss North. If I believed that Bahram Khan had devised this dastardly plot against you I would hunt him down like a bloodhound until he was delivered up to justice, though that would mean the death of all my hopes for this frontier. In one way, of course, it would simplify matters a good deal. I am not in the habit of bothering ladies with politics, but there can be no harm in saying that it gives me great pain to differ from a man I respect as I do your brother. He has done so much for the frontier that it seems almost presumption in me to set my opinion above his. However, I have formed that opinion after long and careful study of the Khemistan problem, and only the very strongest proof that I had been mistaken could induce me to alter it. But if you should identify Bahram Khan's servants as your assailants, it would be conclusive evidence that he is not the man I take him to be."

"And then you would see that Dick was right, and leave him to manage things in his own way?"

"My dear Miss North, we are now soaring into the domain of improbabilities. If my opinion were once modified, it is possible that your brother's view might prevail, or again, it might not."

"I am certain he would not be sorry if Bahram Khan was proved untrustworthy," was Mabel's mental comment. "It would show him a way out of his difficulty. And now I shall be able to do it."

Mabel was particularly cheerful all the rest of the day, as indeed she had a right to be, for had she not just secured the safety of the frontier? Warned by her experience of the morning, she made no further attempt to entrap Mr. Burgrave into a political discussion, but contented herself with showing in numberless little ways her gratitude for the concession he was prepared to make. She even welcomed his offer to introduce her to the beauties of Browning, a poet whose works she had been wont to regard with the mingled alarm and dislike which, in the case of a modern young lady, can only spring from ignorance of them.

He sent a servant back to the bungalow he had occupied to fetch the two portly volumes which, as he told her, always formed a part of his travelling library, and she read aloud to him without a murmur a considerable portion of "Paracelsus." Under the combined influence of the poetry he liked best and the reader's voice, the Commissioner forgot alike his injuries and the difficulties which beset his policy, and the household fairly basked in his smiles. This, at least, was what Fitz Anstruther said, but he had happened to intrude upon the reading, and was adversely affected by the peaceful

scene.

The next morning, as Dick was going to his office, Mabel intercepted him in the veranda. "I am ready to identify those men as soon as you like, Dick," she said.

He looked at her in surprise. "Wouldn't you rather wait until you have recovered a little from the shock?" he asked.

"Oh no, I'm all right now. I should like to get it over, Dick."

"Well, you certainly seem to have picked up wonderfully. I suppose there's no doubt of your knowing them again?"

Mabel shuddered. “How could I help recognizing them? The red light and those awful faces-it seems as if the whole thing was photographed on my mind. I should know them anywhere."

"Oh, all right. It would be far worse, you know, to try to identify them and fail than to let the thing go altogether."

"You needn't be afraid. Only I should be glad not to have to look forward to it much longer."

"Very well. No doubt it's better to do it before the impression has a chance of fading from your mind. It's a bother about the Commissioner, though. He insists on being present, and Georgie and Tighe say he mustn't on any account be allowed to move until they have wired his knee. We shall have to carry his bed out on the veranda, I suppose. Just like him to think the show can't go on without him. Of course he's afraid we shall contrive to bring his precious protégé in guilty in some underhand way."

Mabel smiled as Dick went down the steps, for she knew better than he did. Mr. Burgrave's anxiety was not so much for Bahram Khan personally as for his own schemes, and not SO much for them as for the continuance of his friendship with the North family.

This knowledge, and the pleasing conviction that she alone possessed it, sustained her when she was summoned in the afternoon to identify her three surviving assailants.

"Come along," said Dick, entering the drawing-room; "they're all here, and Tighe has superintended the removal of the distinguished patient.

They're in the veranda outside bis room. Don't Mab. be frightened, Georgia shall come too and support you."

In spite of her resolution, Mabel trembled a little as she entered the improvised police-court, realizing once more what issues hung upon her words. Fitz was there, and a Hindu clerk, and the Commissioner propped up in bed. Before them stood a dozen natives with turbans and clothes of various degrees of picturesque dirt and raggedness, guarded by as many dismounted troopers who were armed to the teeth.

"Now, Mab, pick 'em out," murmured Dick, from behind his sister.

"But there are too many men here. There were only three," objected Mabel in a hasty whisper.

"Well, and you have to tell us which they were. You didn't think we were going to show you the three prisoners and invite you to swear to them, did you? Now don't waste the time of the court."

Absolute despair seized upon Mabel as she walked down the line of men, and looked shrinkingly into their faces. How was it possible that so many natives, differing presumably in origin and circumstances, could be so much alike? Not one of them blenched under her timid scrutiny. Some looked stolid and some bored, and one or two even amused, but this gave her no help. At last, however it struck her that there was something familiar in one or two of the faces. She returned and examined them more carefully, and then looked round at Dick and the rest.

"This man," she said, pointing to one, "and that one, and this."

"You are certain?" asked Mr. Burgrave.

"Yes; I know their faces quite well." This time an undisguised smile ran momentarily along the line of swarthy

We have every reason to be proud of our colonies, and to look with a contented curiosity to the achievement of Australia's federal Parliament. The richest country in the world still owes us a willing allegiance, and during the last year the bonds have been solidly strengthened. In other words, the branches are growing out from the parent stem as they list; but there is no talk of lopping them off, and the old trunk can still bear the burden of shade and leafage imposed upon it. But the croakers are never satisfied, and despite our good fortune, complaints are heard at every corner. England is in decay, we are told. Her trains are slower than anybody else's; her trade is gone; she cannot compete with the newer markets of the world; she is ceasing to bear sons, and her population before long will decrease as rapidly as the population of France. And lastly, says a monger of statistics, even her death-rate is low! Think of that final tragedy and tremble! Englishmen are born with difficulty, and once they come into the world they cannot get out of it with a proper despatch. Now, what is the meaning of these figures and prophecies we do not know. They are chiefly concocted in order that the citizen, used to a daily sensation, may tremble at his breakfast-table, and may amuse himself in the train or omnibus which hustles him to the city, by propounding remedies for imagined evils. It is, no doubt, a pleasant game to play; but in the end it will prove more dangerous than football. If we are falling behind in the race, it were well to recognize it, and provide remedies. But it is not the purpose of the morning papers to improve the country. All these "organs" are concerned to contrive is a hasty

A

misinformed panic, and we believe that a panic-stricken populace is a greater danger to a State than a declining trade. To revive a trade is not impossible; it is far more difficult to bring back to reason a crazy mob that has lost its head. Nor are our half-penny wiseacres at a loss for a remedy. dozen fresh ones are suggested every day, until we begin to fear an attack of hysteria. Not long since the French nation woke up to believe in what it termed the Anglo-Saxon superiority, and M. Démolins, among others, asked excitedly whence the superiority was derived. A hasty journey to England convinced him at once. England was superior to France, because two wholly obscure schools were hidden away somewhere in the country. He did not remember, this excellent Frenchman, that England had held her own for some centuries, that many of her great men had been educated at such places as Eton, where the methods of Mr. Squeers ("w-i-n, win, d-e-r, der-winder-now go and clean 'em") are not followed. No; the Frenchman pitched on a piece of folly which his own countrymen know not, and said cheerfully that he had discovered the secret of Anglo-Saxon superiority. So it is that our critics are seeking to explain the defeat they suppose inflicted upon England by Franco-German ingenuity. And one gentleman is quite sure that all our woes are due to the neglect of modern languages. Wherefore he has taken up his pen and written to the Times-inspired, of course, by Lord Rosebery, who is haunted by more bogeys than any living statesman. Now, Lord Rosebery, having already seen in his mind's eye a French invasion of England, suddenly discovered at Glasgow that our ignorance of