dean's room. There a little party of agitated people were gathered together. Mrs Hayward seated very square, with her feet firm on the carpet: Mrs Bellendean leaning over her writing-table, with a very nervous look: the Colonel standing against the big window, which exaggerated his outline, but made his features undiscernible. Janet made them a sort of curtsey as she went in, but held her head high, rather defiant than humble. For why should she be humble, she who had all the right on her side, and who owed nobody anything? It was they who should be humble to her if they were going to take away her child. But she could not but say the gentleman was very civil. He put out a chair for her. As she said afterwards, not the little cane one that Mr Brown, the butler, thought good enough, but a muckle soft easy-chair, a' springs and cushions, like the one his wife was sitting in. He didna seem to think that was ower good for the like of her. Joyce did not sit down at all. She stood with her hand upon Mrs Bellendean's table, looking into the agitated face of the lady to whom she had always looked up as her best friend.

"You have got something to tell me?" said Joyce, her voice trembling a little. "About my mother -about my-people?" "Yes, Joyce."

The girl said nothing more. She did not so much as look at Mrs Hayward, who sat nervously still, not making a movement. Joyce supported herself upon the back of the writing-table, which had a range of little drawers and pigeonholes. She stood up, straight and tall, the flexible lines of her slim figure swaying a little, her hands clasped upon the upper ledge. Her hands were not, perhaps, very

white in comparison with the hands of the young ladies who did nothing; but, coming out of her dark dress, which had no ornament of any kind, these hands clasped together looked like ivory or mother-of-pearl, and seemed to give out light. And then there was an interval of tremulous silence. Old Janet, watching them all with the keenest scrutiny, said to herself, "Will nobody speak?"

"Joyce," Mrs Bellendean said. at last, with a trembling voice, "it will be a great, great change for you. You are a wise, good girl; you will not let it alter you to those who-deserve all your gratitude. My dear, it is a wonderful thing to think of. I can but think the hand of Heaven is in it." Here the poor lady, who had been speaking in slow and laboured tones, struggling against her emotion, became almost inaudible, and stopped, while old Janet, wringing her hands, cried out without knowing she did so, "Oh, will naebody put us out o' our agony? Oh, will naebody tell us the truth?"

The Colonel made a step forward, then went back again. His child, his dead wife's child, filled him with awe. The thought of going up to her, taking her into his arms, which would have been the natural thing which he had meant to do, appalled him as he stood and looked at her, a young lady whom he did not know. What would she say or think? There had been nothing to lead up to it, as there was when he had met her in the morning, and when his heart had gone forth to her. Now anxiety and a sort of alarm mingled with his emotion. What would she think? his daughter— and yet a young lady whom he did not know? "Elizabeth?" he said tremulously, but he could say no more.

"Young lady," said another voice behind, with a touch of impatience in it,-"Joyce: it ap"Joyce: it appears I must tell, though I have never seen you before."

Joyce had all but turned her back upon this lady, who, she thought, could have nothing to do with her. She turned round with a little start, and fixed her eyes upon the new speaker. It was curious that a stranger should tell her. one who had nothing to do with it. The little woman rose up, not a distinguished figure, looking commonplace to the girl's excited eyes, who felt almost impatient, annoyed by this interference. "Joyce," Mrs Hayward repeated again, we don't even know each other, but we shall have a great deal to do with each other, and I hope-I hope we shall get on. Your poor mother- was Colonel Hayward's first wife before he married me. He is not to blame, for he never knew. Joyce-your name is Joyce Hayward. You are my husband's daughter. Your father stands there. I don't know why he doesn't come forward. He is the best man that ever was born. You will love him when you know- I don't know why he doesn't come forward," cried his wife, in great agitation. She made herself a sudden stop, caught Joyce by the arm, and raising herself on tiptoe gave the girl a quick kiss on the cheek. "I am your step-mother, and I hopeI hope that we will get on."

Joyce stood like a figure turned to stone. She felt the world whirling round her as if she were coming down, down, some wonderful fall, too giddy and sickening to estimate. The colour and the eagerness went out of her face. She took no notice of Mrs Hayward, whose interference at this

strange moment she did not seem to understand, although she understood clearly all that she said. Her eyes were fixed, staring at the man there against the window, who was her father. Her father! Her heart had been very soft to him this morning, when she believed he was her mother's friend : but her father!—this was not how she had figured her father. He stood against the light, his outline all wavering and trembling, making a hesitating step towards her, then stopping again. Colonel Hayward was more agitated than words could say. Oh, if he had but taken her in his arms in the morning when his heart was full! She stood before him now, knowing the truth, and yet she was no longer real to him. "Henry!" cried his wife sharply from the background. He came forward, but not as he would have done to meet either a friend or an enemy-slowly, faltering, not knowing what to say. When he had come close to her, he put out his hands. "Joyce! you are your mother over again; have youhave you nothing to say to me?"

"Sir," said Joyce, making no advance, "my mother-must have had much to complain of-from you."

His hands, which he had held out, with a quiver in them, fell to his sides. "Much to complain of," he said, with a tremulous astonishment; "much. - to complain of!"

A murmur of voices sounded in Joyce's ears; they sounded like the hum of the bees, or anything else inarticulate, with mingled tones of remonstrance, anger, entreaty: even old Janet's quavering voice joined in. To hear the girl defying a gentleman, the Captain's Colonel, a grand soldier officer, took away the old woman's breath.

"Oh, dinna speak to the gentleman like that!" cried old Janet, getting up with difficulty from her easy-chair. "Oh Joyce, Joyce!" cried Mrs Bellendean. Mrs Hayward said nothing, but she came up to the indignant young figure in the centre of this group, and laid an imperative hand upon her arm. Joyce shook it off. She did not know what she was doing. An immense disappointment, horror, anger with fate and all about her, surged up in her heart, and gave force to the passion of indig nant feeling of which, amid all her thinkings on the subject, she had

never been conscious before. She turned away from the three women who surrounded her, each remonstrating in her way, and confronted once more the man-t -the father -whose great fault perhaps was that he was not the father whom the excited girl looked for, and that the disillusion was more than she could bear.

Colonel Hayward came to himself a little as he looked at her, and recovered some spirit. "I don't blame you," he said, "for thinking So. No, Elizabeth, don't blame her. I was in India. Short of deserting, I couldn't get home."

"Why didn't you desert, then," cried the girl in a flush of nervous passion, "rather than let her die?" Then she turned round upon Janet, who stood behind, burdened with her great shawl, and threw herself upon the old woman's shoulder. “Oh granny, granny, take me home, take me home again! for I have nothing to do here, nor among these strange folk," she cried.

ONCE upon a time, many centuries ago-perhaps five thousand years or more - there dwelt in Central Asia a great Tatar people, whose migrations extended gradually westwards and southwards to the Caspian and to the highlands beyond it. They belonged to that ancient Altaic race which spread on the east towards China, on the north-west to Finland; which peopled Italy with Etruscan and other tribes; which formed the Pelasgian stock in Greece; and which spread to France and to Spain as Basques and Iberians. The tribes with which we are immediately concerned descended southwards from the neighbourhood of Ararat, and peopled Mesopotamia, where they mingled with a Semitic race of nomads who were finding their way from the Arabian deserts to the richer lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates. Others of these tribes, crossing the great western river, or penetrating into the Taurus range, peopled Asia Minor and Syria, and were known as Hittites, or to the Semitic people as Canaanites, or dwellers in the "lowlands of Palestine.

Of the rude condition of the earliest of these hordes, which, as the Mongols, the Turks, and the Hunns (all descended from the same original stock), afterwards spread over the same regions of Asia and of Europe, we may still gather something from the earliest forms of their language.

In personal appearance these Tatar tribes were not very attractive. A sturdy thick-set figure, a large head, a face with short nose and high cheek-bones, the eyes oblique, as among the Chinese, the mouth never graced by

a thick beard, but either hairless or with a thin straggling moustache, the complexion yellowish, the hair and eyes black, and at the back of the half-shaven head a pigtail, sometimes curled up, sometimes hanging down,-these were the chief characteristic features of this indomitable stock. In the south, under the hot and trying climate of the Euphrates valley, the race seems to have fined down, and slender figures are represented on Akkadian sculptures; but among the Etruscans and in Asia Minor the type resembled rather that of the sturdy Turkish peasantry of our own times, who in Smyrna, and even in Constantinople, preserve a much greater proportion of the Mongolian type of physiognomy than is always recognised, our idea of a Turk being usually taken from the upper class, which is never of pure Turanian blood.

The monuments show us also the dress of these Tatar tribes. Thus, while the earliest robes seem to have been of goatskin or other hides (a kind of dress which is said afterwards to have become sacred, and in which the gods are shown to be robed), at a later period woven stuffs were worn by both sexes. In the north, no doubt, the skins of animals slain in the chase, or of domestic beasts, formed naturally the first protection from the cold. The lion-skin of Hercules is the robe also of early Altaic heroes or gods; but in Cappadocia we have statues representing female figures in long garments of many pleats and folds, the head crowned by a cylindrical bonnet not unlike that still peculiar to the Christian women of Bethlehem.

In these same sculptures the male figures wear a short jerkin or tunic tight to the figure. On their heads appears a conical cap or tiara like that still worn by certain Dervish sects. The sturdy legs of these heroes are bare, but on their feet they have a boot with curledup toes, like the Turkish slipper or the riding-boot of the Kurdish and Arab horseman. Gloves for the hand, fingerless, but with a thumb, are also thought to have been worn.

The chiefs-who perhaps alone wore the tiara, which was not unlike the well-known crown of Upper Egypt-were also decked with long robes. The curly-toed boot also known among the Etruscans so struck the Egyptians that it has been shown on monuments at Karnak which represent the Hittites, as distinctive of the conquered warriors of northern Syria.

The tribes appear very early to have domesticated the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the dog, and used the ass-probably in times of peace and the horse, which drew their chariots of war. They were, however, not simply a nomadic people. Very early they began to grow corn and to build houses and towns. The camel also they probably knew before descending into Mesopotamia. How soon they constructed chariots of war it is difficult to say, but it was from the east that the Egyptians (before 1600 B.C.) obtained both horse and chariot. The bow, the spear, the short knife-like sword, the buckler, the club-probably also the sling, and certainly the two-headed battle-axe-were the weapons used in war. The axe appears almost of the same form in Cappadocia and in Etruria.

They were mighty hunters also, and warred against the bear, the

wolf, and the lion (which they called the "big dog"): the tiger alsocontrary to popular ideas as to its habitat-they may have found in Ararat and in the Caucasus, as well as in Hyrcania, south of the Caspian, and in the Hindu Kush. They distinguished many species of deer, and hunted the formidable bison of Western Asia (Bos primigenius). It is not known if they were fox-hunters; and it is even possible, judging from modern custom, that they may have eaten an animal which civilisation gives to the hounds.

The earliest habitations of these Mongolian tribes appear to have been caves, or rude cottages made by an earthen mound piled over a few large stones arranged dolmenwise. No doubt they used wood when wood was to be found, but the old Altaic word for a house is said to mean a "hole" and a "mound" as well.

They came from the land of darkness, from that mysterious country of night, which so occupied the imagination of the Asiatics of the middle ages, who penetrated towards the north. There are many legends of this land of "peltry," skins and furs ; of the long nights, and the voices of the unseen inhabitants with whom the traders conducted a silent traffic; of the dreadful winters, and of the seas of sand or of pebbles lapping like the waves of the ocean. Long after the Altaic tribes had descended into semi-tropical regions, they preserved traditions of their northern home; they still felt the fear of that darkness which accompanied the miseries of the time of snow, and told wonderful legends of the great winter in which all but the righteous few were destroyed; and of the birds who, flying from the south, announced the glad tidings