tain measure of responsibility both to their own country and to Europe. If it was rash or foolish, above all, if it was unpatriotic, so much the worse for the critics themselves. Indeed, the less convincing it was, the more safe was the prime minister to leave it absolutely unnoticed. Under any conditions it was impossible that it could have any practical result. Mr. Balfour challenged his opponents to bring forth a vote of censure, but a vote of censure on a government for its foreign policy would be a measure so extreme and perilous that no patriotic statesman would venture upon it except under circumstances so critical as to make it imperative. Of course any minister is responsible for his foreign policy, and if its results be disastrous in themselves or be contrary to the will of the nation, he must be prepared to pay the penalty.

But the objects at which Lord Salisbury aims at present are approved by the great majority of the Liberal party. The question between them is really whether the methods he is adopting are calculated to secure the object he has in view. There may be those (I believe they are few) who would be prepared to make a dash in order to reward Greece and to secure the liberties of Crete by handing the island over to the government at Athens. But the great mass of opinion on the Liberal side would be content with a settlement which emancipated Crete from Turkish despotism, and left the question of the annexation to Greece to be determined by the course of events. If they have been uneasy as to the conduct of affairs, this has been due to a fear lest the Anti-Hellenic, if not positively Philo-Turkish, sympathies might be allowed to have too much play in the counsels of the ministry. But while this might necessarily provoke criticism, it was far too slight a basis on which to ground a vote of censure. It is extremely doubtful whether the idea of making such a proposal has ever been entertained, and it is hardly wise policy on the part of the ministry to turn the question into the battlefield of

party by throwing out a challenge on their side.

But

But this was unquestionably the effect of Mr. Balfour's taunts, and of Lord Salisbury's reply to Lord Kimberly. Passing over all its other points, the attack on the latter for his protest against the integrity of the Turkish Empire being made the basis of our foreign policy exaggerated the significance of that declaration: "A graver statement could not have been made, and I repeat that it should have been made, in some more formal manner, and with some fuller reasons." what is the offence that has so provoked the ire of the prime minister? It is not easy to discover, for when Lord Kimberley's view is compared with his there is no such grave difference as the sternness of the rebuke suggests. "I do not," says Lord Salisbury, "by any means hold to the doctrine that the integrity of the Turkish Empire will not be modified." What is the view of Lord Kimberley on the opposite side?. “I say there is nothing in the treaty or in the present situation of the world which should preclude any one in my position from announcing, as I did announce and as I wish to announce and to repeat, that I believe that it is for the interest of European peace that we should be disconnected forever from regarding the integrity of the Turkish Empire as the basis of British policy."

There is no doubt a distinct difference in these two statements, but it is to be found rather in the spirit which underlies them than in the statements themselves. The two statesmen would probably differ little in practical policy, opposed though they may seem to be on the definition of their own guiding principle. But even that may be greater in appearance than in fact, and is due largely to the elasticity of the phrase "integrity of the Turkish Empire." If it were to be strictly interpreted, it would be absurd to talk of giving autonomy for Crete, while still holding fast to the idea it expresses. But if it be only the maintenance of a suzerainty, such as we are supposed to have

for the present, is to insist that the end be secured. If there be a failure on that point assuredly the waywardness of the ruling Powers in the concert will not be accepted as sufficient apology and exeuse.

J. GUINNESS ROGERS.

IN KEDAR'S TENTS. 1

BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN, AUTHOR OF "THE

SOWERS."

CHAPTER XVII.

IN MADRID.

Toledo, bearing it in one hand and his cloak in the other, a lean figure in the sunlight.

Father Concha had been in Madrid before, though he rarely boasted of it, or indeed of any of his travels.

"The wise man does not hang his knowledge on a hook," he was in the habit of saying.

That this knowledge was of that useful description which is usually desig. nated as knowing one's way about soon became apparent, for the dusty traveller passed with unerring steps through the narrower streets that lle

"Who travels slowly may arrive too late," said the Padre Concha, with a pessimistic shake of the head, as the carrier's cart, in which he had come from Toledo, drew up in the Plazuela de la Cebada, at Madrid. The careful penury of many years had not, indeed, enabled the old priest to travel by the quick dilligencias, which had often passed him on the road with a cloud of dust and the rattle of six horses. The great journey had been accomplished in the humbler vehicles plying from town to town, that ran as often as not by night, in order to save the horses.

The priest, like his fellow-travellers, was white with dust. Dust covered his face and nestled in the deep wrinkles of it. His eyebrows were lost to sight, and his lashes were like those of a miller.

As he stood in the street the dust arose in whirling columns and enveloped all who were abroad, for a gale was howling across the tableland, which the Moors of old had named majerit, a draught of wind. The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a passenger, so the padre found his own humble portmanteau-a thing of cardboard canvas-and trudged up the Calle

and

1 Copyright, 1896, by Henry Seton Merriman.

de

street of Legovia. Here dwell the humbler citizens of Madrid, persons engaged in the small commerce of the market-place, for in the Plazuela de la Cebada, a hundred yards away, is held the corn market, which, indeed, renders the dust in this quarter particularly trying to the eyes. Once or twice the priest was forced to stop at the corner of two streets, and there do battle with the wind.

"But it is a hurricane," he muttered "a hurricane."

With one hand he held his hat, with the other clung to his cloak and portmanteau.

"But it will blow the dust from my poor old capa," he added, giving the cloak an additional shake.

He presently found himself in N street which, if narrower than its neighbors, smelt less pestiferous. The open drain that ran down the middle of it pursued its varied course with a quite respectable speed. In the middle of the street Father Concha paused and looked up, nodding, as if to an old friend, at the sight of a dingy piece of palm bound to the iron work of a balcony on the second floor.

"The time to wash off the dust," he muttered, as he climbed the narrow stairs, "and then to work."

blowing with the force of a hurricane. It came from the north-west with a chill whistle, which bespoke its birthplace among the peaks of the Guadarramas. The streets were deserted; the oil-lamps swung on their chains at the street corners, casting weird shadows that swept over the face of the houses with uncanny irregularity. It was an evening for evil deeds, except that when nature is in an ill-humor human nature is mostly cowed, and those who have but bad consciences cannot rid their minds of thoughts of the hereafter.

sur

The padre found the house he sought, despite the darkness of the street and the absence of any from whom to elicit information. The venta was on the ground floor, and above it towered story after story, built with the quaint fantasy of the Middle Ages, and mounted by a deep, overhanging gabled roof. The house seemed to have two staircases of stones and two doors, one on each side of the venta. There is a Spanish proverb which says that the rat which has only one nole is soon caught. Perhaps the architect remembered this, and had built his house to suit his tenants.

It was on the fifth floor of this tenement that Father Concha, instructed by Heaven knows what priestly source of information, looked to meet with Sebastian, the whilom body-servant of the late Colonel Monreal, of Xeres.

It was known among a certain section of the Royalists that this man had papers, and perchance some information of value to dispose of, and more than one respectable black-clad elbow had brushed the greasy walls of this stairway. Sebastian, it was said. passed his time in drinking and smoking. The boasted gaieties of Madrid had, it would appear, diminished this sordid level of dissipation.

to

Carlist plots than any other in Ma

drid."

"Can you read?"

"No."

"Then you know nothing," said the padre. "You have, however, a letter in a pink envelope which a friend of mine desires to possess. It is a letter of no importance, of no political value-a love-letter, in fact."

"Ah, yes-ah, yes! That may be, reverendo. But there are others who want it-your love-letter."

"I offer you, on the part of my friend. a hundred pesetas for this letter."

The wrinkled face wore a grim smile. It was so little-a hundred pesetas-the price of a dinner for two persons at one of the great restaurants on the Puerta del Sol. But to Father Concha the sum represented five hundred cups of black coffee denied to himself in the evening at the café, five hundred packets of cigarettes, SOcalled of Havana, unsmoked, two new cassocks in the course of twenty years, a hundred little gastronomic delights sternly resisted season after season.

"Not enough, your hundred pesetas, reverendo-not enough," laughed the man. And Concha, who could drive as keen a bargain as any market-woman of Ronda, knew by the manner of saying it that Sebastian only spoke the truth when he said that he had other offers.

"See, reverendo," the man went on, leaning across the table, and banging a dirty fist upon it. "Come to-night at ten o'clock. There are others coming at the same hour to buy my letter in the pink envelope. We will have an auction-a little auction, and the letter goes to the highest bidder. But what does your reverence want with a loveletter-eh?"

"I will come," said the padre, and turning he went home to count his money once more.

There are many living still who remember the great gale of wind which was now raging through which Father Concha struggled back to the Calle Preciados as the city clocks struck ten. Old men and women still tell how the