"'What mean you, woman?' exclaimed Garstoff, starting from his seat with pallid cheeks.
"'I mean that you have swallowed poison!' screamed Zara, the fire of insanity blazing from her eyes.
'You scorned the daughter of Nemyl, and she has taken revenge! Pray to Isauri—pray to—'
"Garstoff dropped upon the floor, a disfigured corpse, and the Sultan bounded from his place of concealment upon Zara; but the purple veins of her forehead were swelling out like cords, and before he could speak to her she was—dead!"
"Really," says Vitchisvitch, the Russian member, drawing a long breath, "there is too much of the 'blood and thunder' style about that story to suit me; but here is something more quiet."
And he proceeded, my boy, to make known unto us
THE LITTLE MAN IN GREEN.
"On a clear, cold night in December, Nicholas Dimitri, a young officer of Cossacks, was walking slowly through a public street of St. Petersburg, with a military cloak thrown over his shoulder, and looking steadfastly to the ground, as though intent upon some prospect of no ordinary interest. Acquaintances of all ranks were constantly passing him, but their silent salutes met no return, and many a surmise was hazarded as to what his mission was, that it caused such evident abstraction in one so generally admired for his flow d'esprit. Unconscious of attracting attention, Nicholas strode onwards wrapped in thought, until he became aware of violent collision with some
person going in an opposite direction, and almost immediately a hoarse voice exclaimed: