ld not haggle with the old
lord--half to be paid to the lord's bankers in London, and the second
half to him in Neopalia, when he delivered possession to me. The
Turkish government had sanctioned the sale, and I had agreed to pay
a hundred pounds yearly as tribute. This sum, I was entitled, in my
turn, to levy on the inhabitants.

"In fact, my dear lord," said old Mason to me when I called on him in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, "the whole affair is settled. I congratulate you
on having got just what was your whim. You are over a hundred miles
from the nearest land--Rhodes, you see." (He laid a map before me.)
"You are off the steamship tracks; the Austrian Lloyds to Alexandria
leave you far to the northeast. You are equally remote from any
submarine cable; here on the southwest, from Alexandria to Candia, is
the nearest. You will have to fetch your letters--"

"I shouldn't think of doing such a thing," said I, indignantly.

"Then you'll only get them once in three months. Neopalia is extremely
rugged and picturesque. It is nine miles long and five broad; it
grows cotton, wine, oil, and a little corn. The people are quite
unsophisticated, but very good-hearted--"

"And," said I, "there are only three hundred and seventy of them, all
told. I really think I shall do very well there."

"I have no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old gentleman kindly.
He is terribly cut up at having to sell. 'My dear island,' he writes,
'is second to my dead son's honor, and to nothing else.' His son, you
know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed."

"He left a lot of unpaid debts, didn't he?"

"Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris
and London with his cousin Constantine, by no means an improving
companion, if report speaks truly. And your money is to pay the debts,
you know."

"Poor old chap," said I. I sympathized with him in the loss of his
island.

"Here's the house, you see," said Mason, turning to the map, and
dismissing the sorrows of the old lord of Neopalia. "About the middle
of the island, nearly a thousand feet above the sea. I'm afraid it's a
tumble-down old place, and will swallow a lot of money without looking
much better for the dose. To put it into repair for the reception of
the future Lady Wheatley would cost--"

"The future Lady Wheatley says she won't go there on any account," I
interrupted.

"But, my very dear lord," cried he, aghast, "if she won't--"

"She won't, and th