om a refreshing sleep by a noise in the room below. He
looked down and saw an old, old woman, with bent form, tottering step,
and wrinkled brow. She was searching for something which, evidently,
she could not find. Scraping various things, however, and tasting the
ends of her thin fingers, suggested that she was in search of food.
Lancey was a sympathetic soul. The old woman's visage reminded him of
his own mother--dead and gone for many a day, but fresh and beautiful as
ever in the memory of her son.

He descended at once. The old woman had flung herself down in despair
in a corner of the hovel. Lancey quickly emptied the remnants of food
in his wallet into her lap.

It would have saddened you, reader, to have seen the way in which that
poor old thing hungrily munched a mouthful of the broken victuals
without asking questions, though she glanced her gratitude out of a pair
of large black eyes, while she tied up the remainder in a kerchief with
trembling haste.

"No doubt," soliloquised Lancey, as he sat on a stool and watched her,
"you were a pretty gal once, an' somebody loved you."

It did not occur to Lancey, for his philosophy was not deep, that she
might have been loved more than "once," even although she had _not_ been
a "pretty gal;" neither did it occur to him--for he did not know--that
she was loved still by an old, old man in a neighbouring hut, whose
supper had been carried off by the Cossacks, and whose welfare had
induced her to go out in search of food.

While the two were thus engaged their attention was attracted by a noise
outside. Hastening to the door Lancey peeped out and beheld a band of
Bashi-Bazouks galloping up the road. The Turks of the village began to
hold up their heads again, for they regarded these as friends, but scant
was the courtesy they received from them. To dismount and pillage, and
to slay where the smallest opposition was offered, seemed the order of
the day with these miscreants. For some time none of them came near to
the hut where Lancey and the old woman were concealed, as it stood in an
out-of-the-way corner and escaped notice.

While the robbers were busy, a wild cheer, accompanied by shots and
cries, was heard some distance along the road. The Bashi-Bazouks heard
it and fled. A few minutes later Lancey saw Turkish soldiers running
into the village in scattered groups, but stopping to fire as they ran,
like men who fight while they retreat. Immediately aft