skirts (a deadly messenger from the Carlist fort of St. Marcial, on the heights), were as light-hearted and frolicsome as if they were going to a fête de nuit—on, on they came again in my direction.
I had eyes only for one—and she evidently knew it. Oh, the exquisite delight of that moment! Twilight was closing in, yet I presently noted that "the queen of my heart" was followed by an uncanny reptile, she was evidently quite unconscious of its pursuit of her; with unwieldy leaps and bounds whichever way she turned it dogged her footsteps.
Now I have the greatest repugnance to anything of the insect or reptile kind, yet I had manifestly only one course to pursue now; besides, what a happy—may I say heroic?—medium for introduction thus presented itself.
I rushed at the grim, black, lizard-like beast. Twice did it dexterously evade the foot which would have crushed it. The third time, however, I was more fortunate, the full force of my heel had come down on the agile creature, and there was at the same time a curious feeling that it had been severed from the skirt to which it had been clinging tooth and nail. The little party stopped, and the lady of my particular choice with a look of amazement exclaimed, "Señor!"
I hastily explained in French, which happily that lady understood. I pointed to the dead animal at my feet, raised my hat, and smiled triumphantly.
Then, turning to her friends, she pointed at it too, and all united in roars of laughter at my expense, intermingled with loud shouts of "El drap! El drap!"
The fact was it was a well-known Spanish practical joke by which the uninitiated are led to suppose that a cleverly cut piece of cloth attached to a girl's skirts and twitched into action by her as she walks is a reptile of dangerous proportions. Who shall say that men were "gay deceivers ever" after that?
***
Harem on the march.
It has not been given to many to make pen and pencil notes of the ladies of a Pasha's harem, yet twice when in Asia Minor did I come across them as fugitives hastening on before the Russian advance. On the first occasion the impression conveyed was that of a travelling menagerie, so closely were those fair ones packed in a long gilded diligence-like conveyance, the sides of which were closely latticed, while the Pasha—at other times no doubt "a lion amongst the ladies"—was now at large, riding sedately at the rear.
My second was the experience of which I make a pencil note in this article, and which struck me as far the most characteristic of the two.
