rs exhibited their hocus-pocus, and
the magnificent Janissaries resorted thither to fight with one
another. Every Friday afternoon whole bands of these rival warriors
flocked thither as if to a common battle-field, and frequently left
two or three corpses on the scene of their diversions.

Gaskho Bey appeared to take very little notice of all these things,
his chibook curled comfortably on the ground beneath him. At every
pull at it large light-blue clouds of smoke rolled upwards from its
crater, taking all manner of misty shapes and forms till they
disappeared through the window, and Gaskho Bey buried himself in the
contemplation of these smoky phantasms as deeply as if he were intent
on writing a dissertation on the philosophy of pipe-smoking, oblivious
of the fact that below the very house in which he was sitting two
Albanian soldiers, in high-peaked, broad-brimmed caps and coarse black
woollen mantles, who seemed to be taking the greatest possible
interest in him and trying to get as near him as they could, had
already strolled past for the third time, always separating and going
in different directions, somewhat nervously, if they perceived any one
coming towards them.

Only now and then a sly expression on Gaskho's face betrayed the fact
that he was conscious of something going on behind his back. There
little Sidali was amusing himself, while Gaskho Bey was leaning out of
the window, by kneeling on the ottoman behind, and tickling the
uplifted naked soles of his father's feet with a blunt arrow.
Sometimes the arrow would slip and come plumping down on Gaskho's
head, and then the bey would smile indulgently at the naughtiness of
his little son.

And now the evening was falling, and the crowd beneath the
plantain-trees grew thinner. The two Albanians, side by side, again
came towards Gaskho Bey, who now puffed forth such clouds of smoke
from his chibook that one could see neither heaven nor earth because
of them. But the two Albanian mercenaries could make him out very
well, and both of them standing a little way from the window drew
forth their pistols, and one of them standing on the right hand and
the other on the left, they both aimed at Gaskho Bey's temples at a
distance of three paces.

But little Sidali was too quick for them, for he now gave his father
such a poke with the arrow that the latter, provoked partly by the
pain and partly by the tickling, sharply turned his head, and the same
instant there