"Aleikum unallah!" was the parting salutation of the already
far-distant voice.

The mighty pasha turned back in a reverie, and when he got back into
the moonlight, he still saw plainly on his hand the drops of blood
which that powerful grasp had caused to leap forth from the tips of
his fingers.

CHAPTER II

EMINAH

And now for a story, a marvellous story, that would not be out of
place in a fairy tale! Away to another clime where the very sunbeams
and blossoms, where the very beating of loving hearts, differ from
what we are accustomed to.

* * * * *

In whichever direction we look around us, we shall see the land of the
gods rising up before us in classical sublimity, the mountains of
Hellas, the triumphal home of sun-bright heroes. There is the mountain
whence Zeus cast forth his thunderbolts, the grove where the thorns of
roses scratched the tender feet of Aphrodite, and perchance a whole
olive grove sprung from the tree into which the nymph, favored and
pursued by Apollo, was metamorphosed. The sunlit summits of snowy OEta
and Ossa still sparkle there when the declining sun kindles his
beacons upon them, and Olympus still has its thunderbolts; yet it is
no longer Zeus who casts them, but Ali Tepelenti, Pasha of Albania and
master of half the Turkish Empire, and the rose which the blood of
Venus dyed crimson blooms for him, and the laurel sprung from the love
of Apollo puts forth her green garlands for him also.

The poetic figures of the bright gods are seen no more on the quiet
mountain. With a long gun over his shoulder, a palikar walks hither
and thither, who has built his hut in a lurking-place where Ali Pasha
will not find it. The high porticos lie level with the ground; the
paths of Leonidas and Themistocles are covered with sentry-boxes, that
none may pass that way.

From the summit of the mighty Lithanizza you can look down upon the
fairy-like city which dominates Albania. It is Janina, the
historically renowned Janina.

Beside it stands the lake of Acheruz, in whose green mirror the city
can regard itself; there it is in duplicate. It is as deep as it is
high. The golden half-moons of the minarets sparkle in the lake and in
the sky at the same time. The roofless white houses, rising one above
another, seem melted into a compact mass, and they are encircled by
red bastions, with exits out of eight gates.

But what have we to do with the minarets, the baz