consequently the pilgrim casts sixty-three stones in the three days.

On his return from Muna the pilgrim must visit Omra, for which purpose he again puts on the ihram. This is the Little Pilgrimage, performed on the 14th of the month Zul Hadj, to certain shrines about three miles outside of Mecca. This pilgrimage, like that to the Kaaba, was an ancient pagan rite. Coffee-houses, where there are dancing and singing, and barber shops are set up in the little village near the shrines and tombs where prayers are recited. This pilgrimage is often made in the night.

After the religious ceremonies in Mecca and during their progress there is much traffic in merchandise. Nearly all the pilgrims bring productions of their own countries; the Mograbians, red bonnets and woollen cloaks; the European Turks, shoes, embroideries, and all sorts of trinkets made in Europe; the Anatolians,

carpets and silks; the Persians, cashmeres; the Afghans, coarse shawls, toothbrushes made from a spongy tree growing near Bokhara, and beads of soapstone; the Indians, all the rich and fancy products of Hindostan; the people of Yemen, snakelike tubes for Persian pipes; the Africans, various articles used or gathered in the slave trade.

The picturesqueness of the land pilgrimages is much lessened of late years. That from Cairo is mainly official. It brings the sacred coverings for the Kaaba, and it still pays tribute to the desert sheiks, as has been said. It used to be of great splendor: men of rank journeyed with large and showy retinues; and camps of dancing girls and public women, with luxurious equipages, attended the caravan. The Syrian pilgrimage which in 1853 Burton saw halting at Medina on its way to Mecca numbered only about 7000 souls-people on for

on horseback, in litters, or on riding dromedaries. There were eight gradations of pilgrims - those who hobbled along with heavy stores; the riders of asses, camels, and mules; respectable Arabs on dromedaries; soldiers with horses. There were led-horses for every grandee when he wished to leave his litter. Women, children, and invalids sat on carpets spread over the two large boxes which formed the load of each camel. The beauty of the spectacle was in the variety of detail. No man was dressed like his neighbor; there was no uniform equipage for horses or camels. The contrasts were always strange. A band of half-naked Takruri marched with the gorgeous retinue of the Pasha; bearded and high-capped Persians conversed with tarbushed and shaven Turks. It was estimated that the cost to a pilgrim indulging in a litter and travelling with any comfort, not reckoning his forced gifts at the holy places, from Damascus to Mecca and back again, would not be less than £1200.

Of the hosts that now make their way from all parts of the Northern world by sea to Jedda, it is probable that as many perish from disease and crowding in the rotten and often infected ships as used to die on the overland routes.

The distance from Mecca to Medina, due north, is 248 English miles, and by any route a tedious desert march. Medina lies on the elevated plateau of central Arabia, and is so high that the winters are very severe, and even the nights of the torrid summer are cool. The city is less in population (estimated at about 20,000) than Mecca, and more meanly built, but it has more legitimate trade, and a considerable export of dates, a hundred varieties of which are grown in the neighborhood, some of them the most delicious anywhere raised. The celebrity of the city consists in its being the burial-place of the Prophet, and his tomb is a place of pilgrimage, but in its suburbs is a ground that heightens the sanctity of the place. This is El-Bakia, the glorious cemetery of the saints. The first person buried here was Osman-Ben-Mazan, ordered to be interred here by the Prophet, who publicly kissed the forehead of the corpse. Ibrahim, the Prophet's second son, was laid by Osman's side. Here lie Hasan, the son of Ali, and thousands of martyrs and faithful soldiers of the crescent. It is

said that on the last day 70,000 saints, with faces like the full moon, will cleave the soil of El-Bakia. After Mohammed has risen will rise Abu-Bekr, and then the 10,000 Companions of the Prophet. In appearance the cemetery is but a mean place.

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The mosque of Medina, like that of Mecca, is closely surrounded with buildings; it has an open square and colonnades, but its dimensions are less than that of Mecca, being 165 paces in length by 130 paces in breadth. It has no pigeons in its court, and women are not accustomed to enter it. The colonnades are paved, and that portion near the tomb of Mohammed is laid in fine mosaic, as beautiful as can be seen anywhere in the East. The tomb is in the southeast corner of the court, under a dome, which is a conspicuous object in all pictures of the city. The enclosure about the tomb is called ElHedjra, and only privileged persons may enter it. This sacred interior is draped about with rich and heavy curtains. Moslem writer says that the curtain covers a square building of black stones, supported by two pillars, in the interior of which are the tombs of Mohammed and his earliest friends and immediate successors, Abu-Bekr and Omar. These tombs are covered with precious stuff's. There are exaggerated stories current in the East of the treasures in this enclosure, of jewels and precious stones in chests and suspended on silken ropes, of a copy of the Koran in Cufic characters which belonged to Othman-Ibn-Affan. The tale of the suspended coffin of the Prophet is a Christian invention, unknown to Moslems, probably arising from a confusion in mind of this sacred place with the legend of the suspended rock in the Kubbet-es - Sukhra (dome of the rock), in Jerusalem.

We have thus passed in review the chief places of the annual Moslem pilgrimage. That to Medina is not obligatory, but it is meritorious. Remembering the Arab proverb, "A well from which thou drinkest, throw not a stone into it," the writer of this text to accompany the illustrations of the holy places will add no comments,-lest, indeed, some Moslem should recall another proverb regarding those who judge the world merely by their own sensations: "A splinter entered the sound eye of a one-eyed person. wish you good-night!' said he."

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CHAPTER IX.

were going to leave the next morning, and Mrs. Field's secret had not been discovered. Nothing but her ill favor in the village had saved her. Nobody except Mrs. Jane Maxwell had come to call. Mrs. Babcock talked and wondered about it a great deal to Mrs. Green and Amanda. "It's mighty queer, seems to me, that there ain't a soul but that one old woman set foot inside this house since we've been here," said she. "It don't look to me as if folks here thought much of Mis' Field. I know one thing: there couldn't three strange ladies come visitin' to Green River without I should feel as if I'd ought to go an' call an' find out who they was, an' pay 'em a little attention, if I thought anything at all of the folks they was visitin'. There's considerable more dress here, but I guess, on the whole, it ain't any better a place to live in than Green River."

The three women had not had a very lively or pleasant visit in Elliot. Jane Field, full of grim defiance of her own guilt and misery and of them, was not a successful entertainer of guests. She fed them as best she could with her scanty resources, and after her house-work was done, took her knitting-work and sat with them in her gloomy sitting-room, while they also kept busy at the little pieces of handiwork they had brought with them.

They talked desperately of Green River and the people there; they told Mrs. Field of this one and that one whom she had known, and in whom she had been interested; but she seemed to have forgotten everybody and everything connected with her old life.

"Ida Starr is goin' to marry the minister in October," Mrs. Babcock had said the day but one after their arrival. "You know there was some talk about it before you went away, Mis' Field. You remember hearin' about it, don't you?"

"I guess I don't remember it," said Mrs. Field.

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in, an' a new black silk one too. Should you think the Starrs could afford any such outlay?"

"I dun know as I should," replied Mrs. Field.

When she went out of the room presently, Mrs. Babcock turned to the others. "She didn't act as if she cared no more about it than nothin' at all," she said, indignantly. "She don't act to me as if she had any more interest in Green River than Jerusalem, nor the folks that live there. I keep thinkin' I won't tell her another thing about it. I never see anybody so changed as she is."

"Mebbe she ain't well," said Mrs. Green. "I think she looks awfully. She's as thin as a rail, an' she 'ain't a mite of color. Lois looks better.”

"Mis' Field never did have any flesh on her bones," Mrs. Babcock rejoined; "an' as for Lois, nothin' ever did ail her but spring weather an' fussin'. I guess Mis' Field's well enough, but havin' all this property left her has made a different woman of her. I've seen people's noses teeter up in the air when their purses got heavy before now."

"It ain't that," said Amanda.

“Don't remember it? Why, Mis' Field, I should think you'd remember that! It waswn's talk how she followed him

Mrs. Babcock had a handsome fan with spangles on it, and she fanned herself airily, lifting her head up with the innocent importance of a stranger.

She had quite a fine bonnet, and a new mantle with some beaded fringe on it; when she stirred, it tinkled. She looked around, and did not see another woman with one as handsome. It was the gala moment of her visit to Elliot. Afterwards she was wont to say that when she was in Elliot she did not go out much, nobody came to the house, nor anything, but she went to meeting, and she enjoyed that.

It was the evening following that Mrs. Jane Maxwell came. Mrs. Field, sitting with her guests, felt a strange contraction of her heart when she heard the door open. "Who's that comin' ?" asked Mrs. Babcock.

"I guess it's old Mr. Maxwell's brother Henry's wife," replied Mrs. Field.

She arose. Lois went quickly and softly out of the other door. She felt sure that exposure was near, and her first impulse was to be out of sound and hearing of it. She sat there in the dark on the front door-step awhile, then she went into the house. Sitting there in doubt, half hear ing what might be dreadful to hear, was worse than certainty. She had at once a benumbing terror and a fierce desire that her mother should be betrayed, and withal a sudden impulse of loyalty toward her, a feeling that she would stand by her when everybody else turned against her.

She crept in and sat down. Mrs. Maxwell was talking to Mrs. Babcock about the state of the church in Elliot. It was wonderful that this call was made without exposure, but it was. Twice Mrs. Maxwell called Jane Field "Esther," but nobody noticed it except Amanda, and she said nothing. She only caught her breath each time with a little gasp.

Mrs. Maxwell addressed herself almost wholly to Mrs. Babcock concerning her daughter, her daughter's husband, and the people of Elliot. Mrs. Babcock constantly bore down upon her, and swerved her aside with her own topics. Indeed, all the conversation lay between these two. There was a curious similarity between them. They belonged apparently to some one subdivision of human nature, being as birds of the same feather, and seemed to instinctively recognize this fact.

VOL. LXXXV.-No. 510.-82

They were at once attracted, and regarded each other with a kind of tentative cordiality, which might later become antagonism, for they were on a level for either friendship or enmity.

Mrs. Maxwell made a long call, as she was accustomed. She was a frequent visitor, generally coming in the evening, and going home laden with spoil, creeping from cover to cover like a cat. She was afraid to have her daughter and nephew know of all the booty she obtained. She had many things snugly tucked away in bureau drawers and the depths of closets which she had carried home under her shawl by night. Jane Field was only too glad to give her all for which she asked or hinted.

To-night, as Mrs. Maxwell took leave of the three strange women standing in a prim row, she gave a meaning nod to Mrs. Field, who followed her to the door.

"I was thinkin' about that old glass preserve-dish," she whispered. "I don't s'pose it's worth much, but if you don't use it ever, I s'pose I might as well have it. Flora has considerable company now, an' ours ain't a very good size."

When Mrs. Maxwell had gone out of the yard with the heavy cut-glass dish pressed firmly against her side under her black silk shawl, Jane Field felt like one who had had a reprieve from instant execution, although she had already suffered the slow torture. She went back to her guests as steady-faced as ever. She was quite sure none of them had noticed Mrs. Maxwell's calling her Esther, but her eyes were like a wary animal's as she entered the room, although not a line in her long pale face was unsteady.

The time went on, and nobody said, "Why did she call you Esther instead of Jane?"

They seemed as usual. Mrs. Babcock questioned her sharply about Mrs. Maxwell-how much property she had and if her daughter had married well. Amanda never looked in her face, and said nothing, but she was often quiet and engrossed in a new tidy she was knitting.

They don't suspect," Mrs. Field said to herself.

They were going home the next day but one; she went to bed nearly as secure as she had been for the last three months. Mrs. Maxwell was to be busy the next day-she had spoken of making pear sauce-she would not be in