ing to betray it--to set Enva
and Leenoo on to find it out?"

"I did not think," she said. "I never do think before I get into
trouble. I don't say, forgive me this time; but I _will_ hold my
tongue for the future."

By this time our evening meal was ready. As I led Eunane to her place,
Eveena looked up with some little surprise. It was rarely that,
especially on returning from absence, I had sought any other company
than hers. But there was no tinge of jealousy or doubt in her look. On
the contrary, as, with her entire comprehension of every expression of
my face, and her quickness to read the looks of others, she saw in
both countenances that we were on better terms than ever before, her
own brightened at the thought. As I placed myself beside her, she
stole her hand unobserved into mine, and pressed it as she whispered--

"You have found her out at last. She is half a child as yet; but she
has a heart--and perhaps the only one among them."

"The four," as I called them, looked up as we approached with eager
malice:--bitterly disappointed, when they saw that Eunane had won
something more than pardon. Whatever penance they had dreaded, their
own escape ill compensated the loss of their expected pleasure in the
pain and humiliation of a finer nature. Eunane's look, timidly
appealing to her to ratify our full reconciliation, answered by
Eveena's smile of tender, sisterly sympathy, enhanced and completed
their discomfiture.

CHAPTER XXII - PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS.

A chief luxury and expense in which, when aware what my income was, I
indulged myself freely was the purchase of Martial literature. Only
ephemeral works are as a rule printed in the phonographic character,
which alone I could read with ease. The Martialists have no
newspapers. It does not seem to them worth while to record daily the
accidents, the business incidents, the prices, the amusements, and the
follies of the day; and politics they have none. In no case would a
people so coldly wise, so thoroughly impressed by experience with a
sense of the extreme folly of political agitation, legislative change,
and democratic violence, have cursed themselves with anything like the
press of Europe or America. But as it is, all they have to record is
gathered each twelfth day at the telegraph offices, and from these
communicated on a single sheet about four inches square to all who
care to receive it. But each profession or occupation that boasts, as
do most