en I proposed that he should disguise himself as
a farm labourer and should take a place amongst the men who were driving
down for me a set of empty arabas to Philipopolis. The simple plan
succeeded and the fugitive got over the frontier. The wife was very
eager to show how much she felt beholden to me. Her husband had been a
rose-grower and she had for sale a quantity of the precious attar which
she was willing to dispose of to me, and to me only, for a mere song.
She would have given it gladly but she had to join her husband and some
small amount of ready money was essential to her purpose. I bought from
her five very small phials each containing perhaps a spoonful and a half
of the liquid. She assured me that the essence was absolutely pure and
that I could hardly have secured its like for love or money elsewhere. I
was not the best pleased man in the world when I discovered that she had
palmed off on me a perfumed olive oil, which, by the time I examined it
in Constantinople, had turned rancid.

When I was engaged in the administration of the Turkish Benevolent
Fund., the raising of which was mainly due to the late Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, the fact that I was bound upon an errand of mercy,
and that I was instructed not to spare relief by any consideration of
religion or race, enabled me to penetrate into parts of the disturbed
districts into which I should not otherwise have dared to venture. In
the course of my journey I came to Kalofer, where I found a singularly
intelligent and attractive little Bulgarian boy whom I resolved to
rescue from the almost certain starvation which lay before him. His
father had been the Vakeel of the place and the child of course had been
decently reared. He was pinched and pallid with hunger, and he had but a
single garment, a pair of the baggy knickerbockers worn by the peasants
of the district, which enveloped him from heel to shoulder. I got him
decently attired, and in a while managed to place him in the care of
a colleague in Constantinople, and when I left the country my
brother-in-law, Captain William Thompson, who was engaged in the
Levantine shipping trade, gave him a free passage to Liverpool, where
for the space of some months he lived with my sisters, the younger of
whom turned schoolmistress for his advantage, and began to teach him
English. Mr Crummies used to wonder how things got into the papers,
though perhaps he was under some slight suspicion of having contributed
t