high white wall, a pleasant smell
of wood smoke was wafted towards us, which made me sick for the burning
veld. My ear, too, caught the twanging of a zither, which somehow
reminded me of the afternoon in Kuprasso's garden-house.

I pulled up and proposed to investigate, but Blenkiron very testily
declined.

'Zithers are as common here as fleas,' he said. 'You don't want to be
fossicking around somebody's stables and find a horse-boy entertaining
his friends. They don't like visitors in this country; and you'll be
asking for trouble if you go inside those walls. I guess it's some old
Buzzard's harem.' Buzzard was his own private peculiar name for the
Turk, for he said he had had as a boy a natural history book with a
picture of a bird called the turkey-buzzard, and couldn't get out of
the habit of applying it to the Ottoman people.

I wasn't convinced, so I tried to mark down the place. It seemed to be
about three miles out from the city, at the end of a steep lane on the
inland side of the hill coming from the Bosporus. I fancied somebody
of distinction lived there, for a little farther on we met a big empty
motor-car snorting its way up, and I had a notion that the car belonged
to the walled villa.

Next day Blenkiron was in grievous trouble with his dyspepsia. About
midday he was compelled to lie down, and having nothing better to do I
had out the horses again and took Peter with me. It was funny to see
Peter in a Turkish army-saddle, riding with the long Boer stirrup and
the slouch of the backveld.

That afternoon was unfortunate from the start. It was not the mist and
drizzle of the day before, but a stiff northern gale which blew sheets
of rain in our faces and numbed our bridle hands. We took the same
road, but pushed west of the trench-digging parties and got to a
shallow valley with a white village among the cypresses. Beyond that
there was a very respectable road which brought us to the top of a
crest that in clear weather must have given a fine prospect. Then we
turned our horses, and I shaped our course so as to strike the top of
the long lane that abutted on the down. I wanted to investigate the
white villa.

But we hadn't gone far on our road back before we got into trouble. It
arose out of a sheep-dog, a yellow mongrel brute that came at us like a
thunderbolt. It took a special fancy to Peter, and bit savagely at his
horse's heels and sent it capering off the road. I should have warn