'If I am discovered?' I urged, with a heart that vibrated with strange emotions.

'Where so safe as within a pistol-shot of your own soldiers?'

'True—but your honour, Iola?'

'Is in my own keeping—do you hesitate?' she added, with a flash in her magnificent eyes.

'Dearest Iola, I will be here in an hour after sunset—but how to reach the window?'

'Leave that to me.'

'Hush!'

'Some one comes,' she exclaimed, and shut the latticed-window, as I hurried away in a tumult of thought.

The interruption proceeded only from a wandering Arab, who was drunk with raki, and chaunted aloud the glories of the starlight, which, in his hot and sultry clime, is loved better than the sunshine.

'Leili—Leili! O night—night!' was the burden of his monotonous and intrusive ditty, for which I felt a decided inclination to punch his head.