all about naughty
children--_very_ naughty children--and please, auntie, they mustn't
improve." The same Janie and Millie, only a head and shoulders taller.

"It shall be a tale of the Black Mountain," said Aunt Cattie, after a
pause. "The Black Mountain, or Montenegro, is a real place, Janie,
marked in the map of Turkey in Europe, yet as wild and full of horrors
as Millie could desire. It is a tract of country, several miles long,
in the south-east part of Dalmatia. Its western side slopes down to, or
overhangs, the beautiful Adriatic Sea; the eastern, unhappily for its
peace, borders on Turkey, and between its gallant but lawless Christian
inhabitants and their Mahometan oppressors there has been, for
centuries, war, the most merciless you can imagine. We, who lived some
years in the neighbouring seaport-town of Cattaro, heard enough, and
sadly too much, of their atrocities."

During this preface to the story the girls had settled themselves with
their knitting at Aunt Cattie's feet, and Archie, their brother, at her
elbow, his eyes fixed on Aunt Cattie's animated face, and his ears
"bristled up," as Millie expressed it, in expectation of her promised
narrative. It began thus:--

"Mr Englefield and I, when first we married, in 1843, lived in a small
but pretty dwelling outside the gate of Cattaro. The front of our house
looked across to a narrow arm of the sea, to a range of hills. A bleak,
rocky mountain stood at the back of our house and of the town; so you
see we were in a very cramped situation. The sun rose an hour later,
and set an hour earlier with us than elsewhere; the noonday sun baked us
in summer, the keen winds, pent between our mountains, eddied round us
in winter, and in autumn we were often wrapped in dense fog for days
together."

Cattaro is a considerable port, in the hands of the Austrians, and some
of its traders were connected with the house of "Popham and Company,"
for which your uncle was then an agent. He was often away for weeks
together, on business. I remained behind, and was much alone, but time
never hung heavy on my hands, for it was fully occupied with making
sketches from nature. These I carefully finished afterwards, and they
found a ready sale at Corfu, through the kindness of a friend. These
little gains eked out our slender income, and I remember no moment of
purer delight than that in which I welcomed your uncle home one soft
autumn morning, and placed my first hoa