I cannot tell you the story just as Nikola told it to me, with all that flow of language common in a Greek, my memory is not good enough for that; but the facts, and some of his quaint expressions, I can recount, for these I never shall forget. My travel took me to a distant island of the Greek Archipelago, called Sikinos, last winter, an island only to be reached by a sailing-boat, and here, in quarters of the humblest nature, I was storm-stayed for five long days. Nikola had been my muleteer on an expedition I made to a remote corner of the island where still are to be traced the ruins of an ancient Hellenic town, and about a mile from it a temple of Pythian Apollo. He was a fine stalwart fellow of thirty or thereabouts; he had a bright intelligent face, and he wore the usual island costume, namely, knickerbocker trousers of blue homespun calico, with a fulness, which hangs down between the legs, and when full of things, for it is the universal pocket, wabbles about like the stomach of a goose; on his head he wore a faded old fez, his feet were protected from the stones by sandals of untanned skin, and he carried a long stick in his hand with which to drive his mule.

Sikinos is perhaps the most unattainable corner of Europe, being nothing but a barren harborless rock in the middle of the Ægean sea, possessing as a fleet one caique, which occasionally goes to a neighboring island where the steamer stops, to see if there are any communications from the outer world, and four rotten fishing boats, which seldom venture more than a hundred yards from the shore. The fifteen hundred inhabitants of this rock lead a monotonous life in two villages, one of which is two hundred years old, fortified and dirty, and called the “Kastro,” or the “camp”; the other is modern, and about five minutes’ walk from the camp, and is called “the other place”; so nomenclature in Sikinos is simple enough. The inhabitants are descended from certain refugees who, two hundred years ago, fled from Crete during a revolution, and built the fortified village up on the hillside out of the reach of pirates, and remained isolated from the world ever since. Before they came, Sikinos had been uninhabited since the days of the ancient Greeks. The only two men in the place who have travelled—that is to say, who have been as far as Athens—are the Demarch, who is the chief legislator of the island, and looked up to as quite a man of the world, and Nikola, the muleteer.

I must say, the last thing I expected to hear in Sikinos was a romance, but on one of the stormy days of detention there, with the object of whiling away an hour, I paid a visit to Nikola in his clean white house in “the other place.” He met me on the threshold with a hearty “We have well met,” bade me sit down on his divan, and sent his wife—a bright, buxom young woman—for the customary coffee, sweets, and raki; he rolled me a cigarette, which he carefully licked, to my horror, but which I dared not refuse to smoke, cursed the weather, and stirred the embers in the brazier preparatory to attacking me with a volley of questions. I always disarm inquisitiveness on such occasions by being inquisitive myself. “How long have you been married?” “How many children have you got?” “How old is your wife?” and by the time I had asked half a dozen such questions, Nikola, after the fashion of the Greeks, had forgotten his own thirst for knowledge in his desire to satisfy mine.

In Nikola’s case unparalleled success attended this manoeuvre, and from the furtive smiles which passed between husband and wife I realised that some mystery was attached to their unions which I forthwith made it my business, to solve.

“I always call her ‘my statue,’” said the muleteer, laughing, “‘my marble statue,’” and he slapped her on the back to show that, at any rate, she was made of pretty hard material.

“Can Pygmalion have married Galatea after all?” I remarked for the moment, forgetting the ignorance of my friends on such topics, but a Greek never admits that he does not understand, and Nikola replied, “No; her name is Kallirhoe, and she was the priest’s daughter.”

Having now broached the subject, Nikola was all anxiety to continue it; he seated himself on one chair, his wife took another, ready to prompt him if necessary, and remind him of forgotten facts. I sat on the divan; between us was the brazier; the only cause for interruption came from an exceedingly naughty child, which existed as a living testimony that this modern Galatea had recovered from her transformation into stone.

“I was a gay young fellow in those days,” began Nikola.

“Five years ago last carnival time,” put in the wife, but she subsided on a frown from her better half; for Greek husbands never meekly submit, like English ones, to the lesser portion of command, and the Greek wife is the pattern of a weaker vessel, seldom sitting down to meals, cooking, spinning, slaving,—a mere chattel, in fact.

“I was the youngest of six—two sisters and four brothers, and we four worked day after day to keep our old father’s land in order, for we were very poor, and had nothing to live upon except the produce of our land.”

Land in Sikinos is divided into tiny holdings: one man may possess half a dozen plots of land in different parts of the island, the produce of which—the grain, the grapes, the olives, the honey, etc.—he brings on mules to his store (?p?????) near the village. Each landowner has a store and a little garden around it on the hillside, just outside the village, of which the stores look like a mean extension, but on visiting them we found their use.

“We worked every day in the year except feast-days, starting early with our ploughs, our hoes, and our pruning hooks, according to the season, and returning late, driving our bullocks and our mules before us.” An islander’s tools are simple enough—his plough is so light that he can carry it over his shoulders as he drives the bullocks to their work. It merely scratches the back of the land, making no deep furrows; and when the work is far from the village the husbandman starts from home very early, and seldom returns till dusk.

“On feast-days we danced on the village square. I used to look forward to those days, for then I met Kallirhoe, the priest’s daughter, who danced the syrtos best of all the girls, tripping as softly as a Nereid,” said Nikola, looking approvingly at his wife. I had seen a syrtos at Sikinos, and I could testify to the fact that they dance it well, revolving in light wavy lines backwards, forwards, now quick, now slow, until you do not wonder that the natives imagine those mystic beings they call Nereids to be for ever dancing thus in the caves and grottoes. The syrtos is a semicircular dance of alternate young men and maidens, holding each other by handkerchiefs, not from modesty, as one might at first suppose, but so as to give more liberty of action to their limbs, and in dancing this dance it would appear Nikola and Kallirhoe first felt the tender passion of love kindled in their breasts. But between the two a great gulf was fixed, for marriages amongst a peasantry so shrewd as the Greeks are not so easily settled as they are with us. Parents have absolute authority over their daughters, and never allow them to marry without a prospect, and before providing for any son a father’s duty is to give his daughters a house and a competency, and he expects any suitor for their hand to present an equivalent in land and farm stock. The result of this is to create an overpowering stock of maiden ladies, and to drive young men from home in search of fortunes and wives elsewhere.

This was the breach which was fixed between Nikola and Kallirhoe—apparently a hopeless case, for Nikola had sisters, and brothers, and poverty-stricken parents; he never could so much as hope to call a spade his own; during all his life he would have to drudge and slave for others. They could not run away; that idea never occurred to them, for the only escape from Sikinos was by the solitary caique. “I had heard rumors,” continued Nikola, “of how men from other islands had gone to far-off countries and returned rich, but how could I, who had never been off this rock in all my life?

“I should have had to travel by one of those steamers which I had seen with their tail of smoke on the horizon, and about which I had pondered many a time, just like you, sir, may look and ponder at the stars; and to travel I should require money, which I well knew my father would not give me, for he wanted me for his slave. My only hope, and that was a small one, was that the priest, Papa Manoulas, Kallirhoe’s father, would not be too hard on us when he saw how we loved each other. He had been the priest to dip me in the font at my baptism; he always smoked a pipe with father once a week; he had known me all my life as a steady lad, who only got drunk on feast-days. ‘Perhaps he will give his consent,’ whispered my mother, putting foolish hopes into my brain. Poor old woman! she was grieved to see her favorite looking worn and ill, listless at his work, and for ever incurring the blame of father and brothers; only when I talked to her about Kallirhoe did my face brighten a little, so she said one day, ‘Papa Manoulas is kind; likely enough he may wish to see Kallirhoe happy.’ So one evil day I consented to my mother’s plan, that she should go and propose for me.”

Some explanation is here necessary. At Sikinos, as in other remote corners of Greece, they still keep up a custom called p???e??a. The man does not propose in person, but sends an old female relative to seek the girl’s hand from her parents; this old woman must have on one stocking white and the other red or brown. “Your stockings of two colors make me think that we shall have an offer,” sings an island poem. Nikola’s mother went thus garbed, but returned with a sorrowful face. “I was made to eat gruel,” said he, using the common expression in these parts for a refusal, “and nobody ate more than I did. Next day Papa Manoulas called at our house. My heart stood still as he came in, and then bubbled over like a seething wine vat when he asked to speak to me alone. ‘You are a good fellow, Kola,’ he began. ‘Kallirhoe loves you, and I wish to see you happy;’ and I had fallen on his neck and kissed him on both cheeks before he could say, ‘Wait a bit, young man; before you marry her you must get together just a little money; I will be content with 1,000 drachmas (£40). When you have that to offer in return for Kallirhoe’s dower you shall be married,’ ‘A thousand drachmas!’ muttered I. ‘May the God of the ravens help me!’” (an expression denoting impossibility), “and I burst into tears.”

The men of modern Greece when violently agitated cry as readily as cunning Ulysses, and are not ashamed of the fact.

“I remember well that evening,” continued Nikola. “I left the house as it was getting dusk, and climbed down the steep path to the sea. I wandered for hours amongst the wild mastic and the brushwood. My feet refused to carry me home that night, so I lay down on the floor in the little white church, dedicated to my patron saint, down by the harbor, where we go for our annual festival when the priest blesses the waters and our boats. Many’s the time, as a lad, I’ve jumped into the water to fetch out the cross, which the priest throws into the sea with a stone tied to it on this occasion, and many’s the time I’ve been the lucky one to bring it up and get a few coppers for my wetting. That night I thought of tying a stone round my own neck and jumping into the sea, so that all traces of me might disappear.

“I could not make up my mind to face any one all next day, so I wandered amongst the rocks, scarcely remembering to feed myself on the few olives I had in my pocket. I could do nothing but sing ‘The Little Caique,’ which made me sob and feel better.”

The song of “The Little Caique” is a great favorite amongst the seafaring men of the Greek islands. It is a melancholy love ditty, of which the following words are a fairly close translation:—

“Towards evening I returned home. My mother’s anxious face told me that she, too, had suffered during my absence; and out of a pot of lentil soup, which was simmering on the embers, she gave me a bowlful, and it refreshed me. To my dying day I shall never forget my father’s and brothers’ wrath. I had wilfully absented myself for a whole day from my work. I was called ‘a peacock,’ ‘a burnt man’ (equivalent to a fool), ‘no man at all,’ ‘;horns,’ and any bad name that occurred to them. For days and weeks after this I was the most miserable, down-trodden Greek alive, and all on account of a woman.” And here Nikola came to a stop, and ordered his wife to fetch him another glass of raki to moisten his throat. No Greek can talk or sing long without a glass of raki.

“About two months after these events,” began Nikola with renewed vigor, “my father ordered me to clear away a heap of stones which occupied a corner of a little terrace-vineyard we owned on a slope near the church of EpiscopÌ.23 We always thought the stones had been put there to support the earth from falling from the terrace above, but it lately had occurred to my father that it was only a heap of loose stones which had been cleared off the field and thrown there when the vineyard was made, and the removal of which would add several square feet to the small holding. Next morning I started about an hour before the PanagÍa (Madonna) had opened the gates of the East,24 with a mule and panniers to remove the stones. I worked hard enough when I got there, for the morning was cold, and I was beginning to find that the harder I worked the less time I had for thought. Stone after stone was removed, pannier-load after pannier-load was emptied down the cliff, and fell rattling amongst the brushwood and rousing the partridges and crows as they fell. After a couple of hours’ work the mound was rapidly disappearing, when I came across something white projecting upwards. I looked at it closely; it was a marble foot. More stones were removed, and disclosed a marble leg, two legs, a body, an arm; a head and another arm, which had been broken off by the weight of the stones, lay close by. Though I was somewhat astonished at this discovery, yet I did not suppose it to be of any value. I had heard of things of this kind being found before. My father had an ugly bit of marble which came out of a neighboring tomb. However, I did not throw it over the cliff with the other stones, but I put it on one side and went on again with my work.

“All day long my thoughts kept reverting to this statue. It was so very life-like—so different from the stiff, ugly marble figures I had seen; and it was so much larger, too, standing nearly four feet high. Perhaps, thought I, the PanagÍa has put it here—perhaps it is a sacred miracle-working thing, such as the priests find in spots like this. And then suddenly I remembered how, when I was a boy, a great German effendi had visited Sikinos, and was reported to have dug up and carried away with him priceless treasures. Is this statue worth anything? was the question which haunted me all day, and which I would have given ten years of my young life to solve.

“When my day’s work was over, I put the statue on to my mule, and carefully covered it over, so that no one might see what I had found; for though I was hopelessly ignorant of what the value of my discovery might be, yet instinct prompted me to keep it to myself. It was dark when I reached the village, and I went straight to the store, sorely perplexed as to what to do with my treasure. There was no time to bury it, for I had met one of my brothers, who would tell them at home that I had returned; so in all haste I hid the cold white thing under the grain in the corner, trusting that no one would find it, and went home. I passed a wretched night, dreaming and restless by turns. Once I woke up in horror, and found it difficult to dispel the effects of a dream in which I had sold Kallirhoe to a prince, and married the statue by mistake. And next day my heart stood still when my father went down to the store with me, shoved his hand into the grain, and muttered that we must send it up to the mill to be ground. That very night I went out with a spade and buried my treasure deep in the ground under the straggling branches of our fig-tree, where I knew it would not be likely to be disturbed.”

Nikola paused here for a while, stirred the embers with the little brass tweezers, the only diminutive irons required for so lilliputian a fire, sang snatches of nasal Greek music, so distasteful to a western ear, and joined his wife in muttering “winter!” “snow!” “storm!” and other less elegant invectives against the weather, which these islanders use when winter comes upon them for two or three days, and makes them shiver in their wretched unprotected houses; and they make no effort to protect themselves from it, for they know that in a few days the sun will shine again and dry them, their mud roofs will cease to leak, and nature will smile once more.

If they do get mysterious illnesses they will attribute them to supernatural causes, saying a Nereid or a sprite has struck them, and never suspect the damp. Nature’s own pupils they are. Their only medical suggestion is that all illnesses are worms in the body, which have been distributed by God’s agents, the mysterious and invisible inhabitants of the air, to those whose sin requires chastising, or whose days are numbered. Such is the simple bacillus theory prevalent in the Greek islands. Who knows but what they are right?

“Never was a poor fellow in such perplexity as I was,” continued Nikola, “the possessor of a marble woman whose value I could not learn, and about whom I did not care one straw, whilst I yearned after a woman whose value I knew to be a thousand drachmas, and whom I could not buy. My hope, too, was rendered more acute by the vague idea that perhaps my treasure might prove to be as valuable as Kallirhoe, and I smiled to think of the folly of the man who would be likely to prefer the cold marble statue to my plump, warm Kallirhoe. But they tell me that you cold Northerners have hearts of marble, so I prayed to the PanagÍa and all the saints to send some one who would take the statue away, and give me enough money to buy Kallirhoe.

“I was much more lively now; my father and brothers had no cause to scold me any longer, for I had hope; every evening now I went to the cafÉ to talk, and all the energy of my existence was devoted to one object, namely, to get the Demarch to tell me all he knew about the chances of selling treasures in that big world where the steamer went, without letting him know that I had found anything. After many fruitless efforts, one day the Demarch told me how, in the old Turkish days, before he was born, a peasant of Melos had found a statue of a woman called Aphrodite, just as I had found mine, in a heap of stones; that the peasant had got next to nothing for it, but that Mr. Brest, the French consul, had made a fortune out of it, and that now the statue was the wonder of the Western world. By degrees I learnt how relentless foreigners like you, Effendi, do swoop down from time to time on these islands and carry home what is worth thousands of drachmas, after giving next to nothing for them. A week or two later, I learnt from the Demarch’s lips how strict the Greek Government is, that no marble should leave the country, and that they never give anything like the value for the things themselves, but that sometimes by dealing with a foreign effendi in Athens good prices have been got and the Government eluded.

“Poor me! in those days my hopes grew very very small indeed. How could I, an ignorant peasant, hope to get any money from anybody? So I thought less and less about my statue, and more and more about Kallirhoe, until my face looked haggard again, and my mother sighed.

“My statue had been in her grave nearly a year,” laughed Nikola, “and after the way of the world she was nearly forgotten, when one day a caique put in to Sikinos, and two foreign effendi—Franks, I believe—came up to the town; they were the first that had visited our rock since the German who had opened the graves on the hillside, and had carried off a lot of gold and precious things. So we all stared at them very hard, and gathered in crowds around the Demarch’s door to get a glimpse at them as they sat at table. I was one of the crowd, and as I looked at them I thought of my buried statue, and my hope flickered again.

“Very soon the report went about amongst us that they were miners from Laurion, come to inspect our island and see if we had anything valuable in the way of minerals; and my father, whose vision it had been for years to find a mine and make himself rich thereby, was greatly excited, and offered to lend the strangers his mules. The old man was too infirm to go himself, greatly to his regret, but he sent me as muleteer, with directions to conduct the miners to certain points of the island, and to watch narrowly everything they picked up. Many times during the day I was tempted to tell them all about my statue and my hopes, but I remembered what the Demarch had said about greedy foreigners robbing poor islanders. So I contented myself with asking all sorts of questions about Athens; who was the richest foreign effendi there, and did he buy statues? what sort of thing was the custom, and should I, who came from another part of Greece, be subject to it if I went? I sighed to go to Athens.

“All day I watched them closely, noted what sort of stones they picked up, noted their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and as I watched them an idea struck me—an idea which made my heart leap and tremble with excitement.

“That evening I told my father some of those lies which hurt nobody, and are therefore harmless, as the priests say. I told him I had acquired a great knowledge of stones that day, that I knew where priceless minerals were to be found; I drew on my imagination about possible hidden stores of gold and silver in our rocky Sikinos. I saw that I had touched the right chord, for though he always told us hard-working lads that an olive with a kernel gives a boot to a man, yet I felt sure that his inmost ideas soared higher, and that he was, like the rest of the Sikiniotes, deeply imbued with the idea that mineral treasures, if only they could be found, would give a man more than boots.

“From that day my mode of life was changed. Instead of digging in the fields and tending the vines, I wandered aimlessly about the island collecting specimens of stones. I chose them at random—those which had some bright color in them were the best—and every evening I added some fresh specimens to my collection, which were placed for safety in barrels in the store. ‘Don’t say a word to the neighbors,’ was my father’s injunction; and I really believe they all thought my reason was leaving me, or how else could they account for my daily wanderings?

“In about a month’s time I had collected enough specimens for my purpose, and then, with considerable trepidation, one evening I disclosed my plan to my father. ‘Something must be done with those specimens,’ I began; and as I said this I saw with pleasure his old eyes sparkle as he tried to look unconcerned.

“‘Well, Kola, what is to be done with them?’

“‘Simply this, father. I must take them to Athens or Laurion, and get money down for showing the effendi where the mines are. We can’t work them ourselves.’

“‘To Athens! to Laurion!’ exclaimed my father, breathless at the bare notion of so stupendous a journey.

“‘Of course I must,’ I added, laughing, though secretly terrified lest he should flatly refuse to let me go; and before I went to bed that night my father promised to give me ten drachmas for my expenses. ‘Only take a few of your specimens, Kola; keep the best back;’ for my father is a shrewd man, though he has never left Sikinos. But on this point I was determined, and would take all or none, so my father grumbled and called me a ‘peacock,’ but for this I did not care.

“Next day I ordered a box for my specimens. ‘Why not take them in the old barrels?’ growled my father. But I said they might get broken, and the specimens inside be seen. So at last a wooden box, just four feet long and two feet high, was got ready—not without difficulty either, for wood in Sikinos is rarer than quails at Christmas, and my father grumbled not a little at the sum he had to pay for it—more than half the produce of his vintage, poor man! And when I thought how my mother might not be able to make any cheesecakes at Easter—the pride of her heart, poor thing!—I almost regretted the game I was playing.”

The Easter cheesecakes of the island (t???p?tta) are what they profess to be; cheese, curd, saffron, and flour being the chief ingredients. They are reckoned an essential luxury at that time of the year, and some houses make as many as sixty. It is a sign of great poverty and deprivation when none are made.

“The caique was to leave next morning if the wind was favorable for Ios, where the steamer would touch on the following day, and take me on my wild, uncertain journey. I don’t think I can be called a coward for feeling nervous on this occasion. I admit that it was only by thinking steadfastly about Kallirhoe that I could screw up my courage. When it was quite dark I took the wooden key of the store, and, as carelessly as I could, said I was going to pack my specimens. My brothers volunteered to come and help me, for they were all mighty civil now it became known that I was bound for Athens to make heaps of money, but I refused their help with a surly ‘good night,’ and set off into the darkness alone with my spade. I was horribly nervous as I went along; I thought I saw a Nereid or a Lamia in every olive-tree. At the least rustle I thought they were swooping down upon me, and would carry me off into the air, and I should be made to marry one of those terrible creatures and live in a mountain cavern, which would be worse than losing Kallirhoe altogether; but St. Nikolas and the PanagÍa helped me, and I dug my statue up without any molestation.

“She was a great weight to carry all by myself, but at last I got her into the store, and deposited her in her new coffin, wedged her in, and cast a last, almost affectionate look at this marble representation of life, which had been so constantly in my thoughts for months and months, and finally I proceeded to bury her with specimens, covering her so well that not a vestige of marble could be seen for three inches below the surface. What a weight the box was! I could not lift it myself, but the deed was done, so I nailed the lid on tightly, and deposited what was over of my specimens in the hole where the statue had been reposing, and then I lay down on the floor to rest, not daring to go out again or leave my treasure. I thought it never would be morning; every hour of the night I looked out to see if there was any fear of a change of wind, but it blew quietly and steadily from the north; it was quite clear that we should be able to make Ios next morning without any difficulty.

“As soon as it was light I went home. My mother was up, and packing my wallet with bread and olives. She had put a new cover on my mattress, which I was to take with me. The poor old dear could hardly speak, so agitated was she at my departure; my brothers and father looked on with solemn respect; and I—why, I sat staring out of the window to see Kallirhoe returning from the well with her amphora on her head. As soon as I saw her coming, I rushed out to bid her good-bye. We shook hands. I had not done this for twelve months now, and the effect was to raise my courage to the highest pitch, and banish all my nocturnal fears.

“Mother spilt a jug of water on the threshold, as an earnest of success and a happy return. My father and my brothers came down to the store to help me put the box on to the mule’s back, and greatly they murmured at the weight thereof. ‘There’s gold there,’ muttered my father beneath his breath. ‘Kola will be a prince some day,’ growled my eldest brother jealously, and I promised to make him Eparch of Santorin, or Demarch of Sikinos if he liked that better.

“The bustle of the journey hardly gave me a moment for thought. I was very ill crossing over in the caique to Ios, during which time my cowardice came over me again, and I wondered if Kallirhoe was worth all the trouble I was taking; but I was lost in astonishment at the steamer—so astonished that I had no time to be sick, so I was able to eat some olives that evening, and as I lay on my mattress on the steamer’s deck as we hurried on towards the PirÆus, I pondered over what I should do on reaching land.

“You know what the PirÆus is like, Effendi?” continued Nikola, after a final pause and a final glass of raki, “what a city it is, what bustle and rushing to and fro!”

I had not the heart to tell him that in England many a fishing village is larger, and the scene of greater excitement.

“They all laughed at me for my heavy box, my island accent, my island dress, and if it had not been for a kind pallikari I had met on the steamer, I think I should have gone mad. The officers of the custom house were walking about on the quay, peering suspiciously into the luggage of the newly arrived, and naturally my heavy box excited their suspicions. I was prepared for some difficulty of this kind, and the agony of my interview quite dispelled my confusion.

“‘What have you there?’

“‘?e??ata (specimens),’ I replied.

“‘Specimens of what?’

“‘Specimens of minerals for the effendi at Laurium.’

“‘Open the box!’ And, in an agony of fright, I saw them tear off the lid of my treasure and dive their hands into its contents.

“‘Stones!’ said one official.

“‘Worthless stones!’ sneered another, ‘let the fool go; and with scant ceremony they threw the stones back into the box, and shoved me and my box away with a curse.

“I was now free to go wheresoever I wished, and with the aid of my friend I found a room into which I put my box, and as I turned the key, and sallied forth on my uncertain errand, I prayed to the PanagÍa Odegetria to guide my footsteps aright.

“The next few days were a period of intense anxiety for me. In subdued whispers I communicated to the consuls of each nation the existence of my treasure. One had the impudence to offer me only 200 drachmas for it, another 300, another 400, and another 500; then each came again, advancing 100 drachmas on their former bids, and so my spirits rose, until at last a grand effendi came down from Athens, and without hesitation offered me 1,000 drachmas. ‘Give me fifty more for the trouble of bringing it and you shall have it,’ said I, breathless with excitement, and in five minutes the long-coveted money was in my hands.

“My old father was very wroth when I returned to Sikinos, and when he learnt that I had done nothing with my specimens; the brightness had gone out of his eyes, he was more opprobrious than ever, but I cared nothing for what he said. My mother had her cheesecakes on Easter Sunday, and on that very day Kallirhoe and I were crowned.”

Thus ended Nikola’s romance. If ever I go to St. Petersburg, I shall look carefully for Nikola’s statue in the Hermitage collection, which, I understand, was its destination.—Gentleman’s Magazine.