of hardened offenders, openly displayed them. Now it appeared that not long before a special Governmental edict had been issued against the removal of ancient cannonballs, and it was pointed out that his Excellency could not suffer his own guests to do those very things which he had forbidden to the public. Bowing to the inevitable I thereupon surrendered my cannon-ball, but the ladies refusing to be influenced by this pure logic, managed to retain theirs, which they afterwards presented to me, so that at this moment I hold it in my hand.

What became of that cannon-ball-mine, I mean-I often wondered, and on this day so long, long afterwards, I found out. There, yes, there neglected in a dusty corner on the floor, in company with the noseless head of a Greek child and the fragments of a Phoenician pot, unhonoured and uncared for, lay the heavy missile that with so much labour I had borne away from Famagusta. There was no doubt about it, I could swear to that lump of iron in any court of law; also it was the only one in the place, and evidently had been deposited here that the authorities might be rid of it. Moreover, by a strange coincidence the very gentleman whose official duty it had been to relieve me of the stolen property in the first instance, was now at my side.

Life is full of coincidences. Who would have thought that the three of us, Major Chamberlayne, Cannon-ball, and I, would live to meet again thus strangely after so long a lapse of time and in so far off a land? Sorely, I admit, was my virtue tempted, for while my guide was mourning over something out of place in a distant corner, I might easily have transferred the ball to my coat pocket, trusting to fortune and the strength of the stitching to get it away, and unobserved. But so greatly has my moral character strengthened and improved during the last decade and a half, that actually I left it where it was,

and where doubtless it will remain until some one throws it on to the museum rubbish heap.

The island of Cyprus is one of the few countries in the world that I have felt sorry to leave. Often I have thought that it would be a delightful place to live in, not in the towns, a frequenter of book-teas, but in solitude as a hermit upon some haunted hill among the shattered pillars of old cities, with vineyard slopes beneath and the sea beyond. Only I should like to be a rich hermit-to the poor that profession must be irksome and then I would restore Bella Pais and see what the land could grow. A friend of mine did in fact turn anchorite in Cyprus, but I noticed that he always seemed to find it necessary to come home for his militia training, and when I re-visited his hermitage the other day, lo! it was desolate.

Fortunately the road from Nicosia to Limasol by which the traveller departs runs through the very dreariest districts of the island, and thereby eases the farewell. For three hours' journey, or more, on either side of it stretch bare, barren hills, worn to the grey bones, as it were, by the wash of thousands of years of rain and bleached in the fiery Cyprian sun. I daresay, however, that with care even the most unpromising of this soil would nourish certain sorts of trees, as probably it did in past ages.

Then the denudation would cease, the earth grow green, the flood waters be held up and the former and the latter rain called down, until here too, as on the Kyrenia coast, the land became a paradise.

And so farewell to Cyprus the bounteous and the beautiful.