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ish government, and under their protection transferred to Cephalonia. Yet again others of their scanty clan meet us at different points of the war in Greece, especially at the first decisive action with Ibrahim, when, in the rescue of Costa Botzaris, every Suliote of his blood perished on the spot; and again, in the fatal battle of Athens (May 6, 1827), Mr. Gordon assures us that "almost all the Suliotes were exterminated." We understand him to speak, not generally of the Suliotes, as of the total clan who bear that name, but of those only who happened to be present at that dire catastrophe. Still, even with this limitation, such a long succession of heavy losses descending upon a people who never numbered above 2,500 fighting-men, and who had passed through the furnace seven times heated of Ali Pacha's wrath, and suffered those many and dismal tragedies which we have just recorded, cannot but have brought them latterly to the brink of utter extinction.

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NOTES.

NOTE 1. Page 261.

On the same occasion the Pacha's son, and sixty officers of the rank of Aga, were also made prisoners by a truly rustic mode of assault. The Turks had shut themselves up in a church; into this, by night, the Suliotes threw a number of hives full of bees, whose insufferable stings soon brought the haughty Moslems into the proper surrendering mood. The whole body were afterwards ransomed for so trifling a sum as 1,000 sequins.

NOTE 2. Page 267.

The deposition of two Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escaped with a dreadful scorching, sufficiently established the facts; otherwise the whole would have been ascribed to the treachery of Ali or his son.

THE FATAL MARKSMAN.

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I.

"LISTEN, dame," said Bertram, the old forester of Linden, to his wife; once for all, listen. It's not many things, thou well know'st, that I would deny to thy asking: but as for this notion, Anne, drive it clean out of thy. head; root and branch lay the axe to it; the sooner the better; and never encourage the lass to think more about it. When she knows the worst, she 'll settle herself down to her crying; and when that's over, all's over; she submits, and all goes right. I see no good that comes of standing shilly-shally, and letting the girl nurse herself with hopes of what must not be."

"But Bertram, dear Bertram,” replied old Anne, "why not? could not our Kate live as happily with the bailiff's clerk as with the hunter Robert? Ah, you don't know what a fine lad William is; so good, so kind-hearted

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"May be, like enough," interrupted Bertram; “kindhearted, I dare say, but no hunter for all that. Now, look here, Anne: for better than two hundred years has this farm in the forest of Linden come down from father to

child in my family. Hadst thou brought me a son, well and good: the farm would have gone to him; and the lass might have married whom she would. But, as the

say.

case stands, - no, I What the devil! have I had all this trouble and vexation of mind to get the duke's allowance for my son-in-law to stand his examination as soon as he is master of the huntsman's business; and just when all's settled, must I go and throw the girl away? A likely thing, indeed! No, no, mistress Anne, it's no use talking. It's not altogether Robert that I care about. I don't stand upon trifles; and, if the man is not to your taste or the girl's, why, look out any other active huntsman that may take my office betimes, and give us a comfortable fireside in our old age. Robert or not Robert, so that it be a lad of the forest, I'll never stand upon trifles: but for the clerk dost hear, Anne? this hero of a crow-quill, never hang about my neck or think to wheedle me again.”

For the clerk's sake old Anne would have ventured to wheedle her husband a little longer: but the forester, who knew by experience the pernicious efficacy of female eloquence, was resolved not to expose his own firmness of purpose to any further assaults or trials; and, taking down his gun from the wall, he walked out into the forest. Scarcely had he turned the corner of the rosy, light-haired face looked in at the door. It was Katharine smiling and blushing, she stopped for a moment in agitation, and said: "Is all right, mother? was it yes, dear mother?" Then, bounding into the room, she fell on her mother's neck for an answer.

house, when a

"Ah, Kate, be not too confident when thou shouldst be prepared for the worst: thy father is a good man, as good as ever stepped, but he has his fancies; and he is resolved to give thee to none but a hunter: he has set his heart upon it; and he'll not go from his word; I know him too well."

Katharine wept, and avowed her determination to die sooner than to part from her William. Her mother com

66

forted and scolded her by turns, and at length ended by joining her tears to her daughter's. She was promising to make one more assault of a most vigorous kind upon the old forester's heart, when a knock was heard at the door and in stepped William. "Ah, William!"— exclaimed Katharine, going up to him with streaming eyes, — " we must part: seek some other sweetheart: me you must never marry; father is resolved to give me to Robert, because he is a huntsman; and my mother can do nothing for us. But if I am to part from you, never think that I will belong to anybody else: to my dying hour, dear William, I will remain faithful to you."

These bursts of wounded feeling were softened in the report of the mother: she explained to the bewildered clerk, who knew not what to make of Katharine's ejaculations, that Bertram had no objections to him personally; but that, simply with a view to the reversionary interest in his place as forester, he insisted on having a son-in-law who understood hunting.

"Is that all?" said William, recovering his composure, and at the same time he caught the sobbing girl to his bosom, "Is that all? Then be of good cheer, dearest Kate. I am not unskilled in hunting: for, at one time, I was apprenticed to my uncle Finstersbusch, the forester-general; and it was only to gratify my god-father the bailiff that I exchanged the gun for the writing-desk. What care I for the reversion of the bailiff's place, unless I may take my Kate into the bailiff's house as mistress? If you can be content to look no higher than your mother did, and Will the forester is not less dear to you than Will the bailiff, then let me die if I won't quit my clerkship this instant; for, in point of pleasure, there's no comparison between the jolly huntsman's life and the formal life of the town."

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