The Wetherbys

Father and Son, or, Sundry Chapters of Indian Experience

To
Lieut.-Col. Geo. Congreve, C.B.
29th Foot
These Chapters are Dedicated,
By His Friend,
The Author.
London, November 6th, 1853

Chapter I

I was born in India, in the military cantonment of Nusseerabad. My father was an officer in the Bengal Light Cavalry, and at the time of my birth had attained the rank of captain. I had a brother, younger than myself; and we children were kept in India until I was twelve and my brother eleven years old.

My father was a person of vast importance, not only in the regiment to which he belonged, but in every cantonment where it happened to be quartered. He was one of those men who are wretched unless they are overwhelmed with business. He was a director of the bank, having bought one share (or rather he had taken it as payment of a bad debt of 50l.) in order to “qualify” himself for office, and thus enable him to speak in the “parlour,” meddle in all the bank’s affairs, and join in the gossip for which all Indian bank-parlours are celebrated. He was also secretary to the Ice Concern,* an office which not only gave him his own shares of ice gratis, but threw into his hands what he was very fond of---a great deal of petty patronage, in the shape of hiring the establishment, including the baboo, or writer, who kept the accounts and collected the subscriptions. He was also actuary of the Mutton Club,* which gave him further patronage in the appointment of shepherds, watchmen, &c., and increased his importance in the bazaar amongst the grain-sellers. By virtue of this office my father had certain perquisites, in the way of “fry,” “head,” “trotters,” and so forth. He was also treasurer of the fund for watering “the Mall,” the road whereon the Station residents took their evening drive. This placed about thirty water-carriers (bheestees) at my father’s disposal, and these men frequently went through their probationary examination in our own garden, which became famous for its early fruit and flowers. My father was also manager of the Amateur Theatrical Company, and the patronage which grew out of this office was something enormous. The stage-tailor, the oilman, the carpenters, the watchmen, the builders who looked to the repairs --- all these people regarded my father as one of the greatest men in the world. As manager, moreover, he possessed the power of ordering from the Calcutta bookseller such plays and farces as he considered necessary for the stage library. The beer and the brandy, too, for the use of the men belonging to the European regiments, who painted the scenes, shifted them, and prompted, were in my father’s absolute gift. In addition to all these offices, he was the principal military contributor to the local journal; but this brought him in so much per column, for periodically increasing the army (of course only in type), especially the cavalry branch --- granting the new furlough regulations --- suggesting the retirement of senior officers --- abolishing the courts of request --- and bestowing a certain number of cadetships, annually, on the sons of meritorious Company’s servants. Nay. my father’s occupations did not end here: he was president of the mess committee, and ordered the whole of the supplies consumed by his hospitable regiment. No European shopman ever received a batch of overland hams and cheeses without immediately sending down samples to my mother for approval. And strange to say that, notwithstanding all my father had to do, he still contrived to spend a couple of hours daily (after tiffen) in the mess billiard-room, and pick up, amongst the junior officers of the corps, three or four chicks*at pool or billiards.

The education of my brother and myself had been utterly neglected. There are no schools in the plains of India, and parents are only too glad if they can keep their children in good health. My mother was beginning to feel anxious about our mental culture, and ashamed of our inability to read and write, or even converse fluently in English.

“My dear John,” said my mother to my father, one morning at breakfast, “it is high time these great boys were sent to England. Just look at Robert (she meant me). Only fancy a boy of that age not being able to read properly! And Charley (that was my brother) hardly perfect in his alphabet!”

“Yes, I know,” said my father, “it is all very bad; but what’s the use of talking about it? Here have I been thirteen years a captain, and thirty-two years in the service, and until I get my majority how are we to send them home? I wish that fellow Jones would go out, or retire, die, or something. Talking of Jones,” added my father, “I’ll make a paragraph out of him for the next paper. Dead or alive, I’ll lay him out next Tuesday in half a column of leader type.”

“What do you mean?” said my mother.

“To kill Jones,” said my father. “Here is a note from Leach.” Leach was the editor of the paper.

“My dear W.---I am going into the Kardar to shoot black partridge, and shall not be back before Thursday. I have left with the printer a column and a half of leader, on the Cultivation of Tea in the Dhoon; you will be good for a column and a half on Military Matters; Blair promises half a column on the Sudder’s last report; and Brown owes the Postmaster-general a grudge, which the late delay of the dâk* will enable him to gratify. The account, therefore, will stand thus---

“This, with the correspondence, the local, and some verses on the Lieut.-Govemor, will make rather a decent paper.

“Yours ever, in haste,

“J. Leach.”

"But, my dear John," exclaimed my mother, "it will be contradicted if you kill Major Jones."

"Well, then," said my father, smiling, "we can explain in a forthcoming issue. We can denounce our imaginary correspondent, and say what a shame it is for people to write so positively on imperfect information. It is all matter, you know, old woman. Grist, grist!" he continued, speaking with his mouth full of muffin. "Robert, bring me the pen and ink, and some paper."

I obeyed the command, and my father, holding up the quire of foolscap, said to my mother,---

"See, Mary, see! this is Jones's winding-sheet, and Leach will not be here to prune down what he calls the exuberance of my diction."

My father wrote as follows:---

“It is our painful duty to announce to our readers the death of Brevet-Colonel and Major Alfred Jones, of the 12th Bengal Light Cavalry, and Governor-general’s agent at Kerwanpore. Private letters inform us that this melancholy event took place on the night of the 24th ultimo. It would seem that Colonel Jones has, for some months past, been suffering severely from an attack of liver, and had been frequently recommended by his medical adviser to proceed to the Cape, or Australia, for that change of climate which, in diseases of the kind, is so extremely desirable. But (alas!) the colonel, whose zeal for the public service has ever been paramount to private considerations, could not be prevailed upon to quit his post, especially at a time when the frontier was in a state of disquietude, if not feverish excitement. Deaf to all remonstrance and entreaty, Colonel Jones persisted in carrying on the arduous duties of his office, scarcely allowing himself that rest which even persons in robust health absolutely require, and denying to himself even the comforts which men at his time of life can hardly afford to dispense with. Colonel Jones continued, with a shattered liver, to penetrate into the depths of districts and jungles teeming with malaria, to acquire information, and take those precautionary measures which circumstances appeared to him to imperatively demand. The consequence has been that a most valuable life has been sacrificed; and we can readily fancy the Governor-general will have no small difficulty in finding a successor to so able a politician and diplomatist as the one who has now gone from amongst us.

“Major Jones came to this country in 1805, and was posted to the 12th Light Cavalry in the same year. He served with his regiment throughout several arduous campaigns; was present at Bhurtpore and at Kotah, where, in company with his gallant friend and comrade, Captain Wetherby, of the same regiment, he signally distinguished himself in leading on a squadron of his corps against a dense mass of the enemy’s horse, which, in one of the most brilliant charges ever made by cavalry, was routed, dispersed, and cut to pieces by the men of the illustrious 12th Light Cavalry. In 1827, Captain Jones was appointed, in consequence of his meritorious services, to staff employ at the Presidency, and has since that year been absent from his regiment. But though with the corps he has been lost to sight, still we believe he has been to memory ever dear. In 1839, Lord Auckland, who was never slow to detect ability and unsoliciting merit, discovered in Major Jones a person eminently fitted for employ upon the frontier, and he was accordingly posted to the locality which has become the scene of his lamented demise. This unfortunate casualty will promote Captain Wetherby, Lieutenant Hardcastle, and Cornet Williams, of the 12th Light Cavalry, to the higher grades.”

“There,” said my father to me, “get on your pony, Robert, and go down with that to the printing-office.” Then, turning to my mother, he said, in a rather discontented tone of voice, “Of all the dunderheads that ever by interest were favoured above their superiors --- of all the cringing parasites that ever debased a soldier’s uniform --- that fellow Jones is, without exception, the paragon.”

My father’s article, on the death of Colonel Jones, attracted the notice of a rival editor, who could not afford to be behindhand with news. He therefore stole Jones’s supposed death, echoed my father’s sentiments, but in different phraseology, and furnished a few additional but unimportant particulars, out of his own head, to take off the suspicion of being indebted to his contemporary for so much “original matter.” My mother was the first to see the death of Colonel Jones in the rival paper, which was published at a station about forty miles distant from where we were quartered. She instantly sent me to the mess billiard-room, with a message to my father, who was picking up chicks as usual, to come home immediately.

“My dear John!” exclaimed my mother, on my father’s making his appearance, “why, it seems that Major Jones is dead.”

“Nonsense!” ejaculated my father. “Is there such luck?”

My mother showed him the leader in the rival paper.

“Pooh!” cried my father. “Why did you send for me on seeing that? Don’t you observe that he has only stolen our news? That’s an old trick of this trade; but never mind, he shall be the first to explain how he came to publish a false rumour.”

That evening, at about seven o’clock, two gentlemen drove up to our bungalow in a high-wheeled buggy. One was Lieutenant Hardcastle, the other Cornet Williams. On being told that the “Captain Sahib” was at home, they alighted, came into the verandah, and told me to tell my father they wished to speak to him. Both these gentlemen had been drinking rather freely; and Cornet Williams, I remember, could not keep his cheroot alight. When my father came out, Lieutenant Hardcastle thus accosted him:

“Well, old boy, it’s all right!---it’s all right! --- it’s all up with Jones! Let’s have some brandy-and-water, and drink his health.”

“My dear fellow, he is only dead in the papers,” said my father. “I don’t believe one word about his death.”

“Don’t you, really?” said Cornet Williams, who had placed his back against a pillar to steady himself. “Don’t you believe it, Wetherby? Don’t you believe Jones is dead?”

“No,” said my father, “it’s merely a rumour that has got into the papers.”

“Oh, hang the papers! I don’t go by what the papers say,” said Lieutenant Hardcastle, speaking very thickly. “Major Baxter has had a sort of official notice, and has sent me here to tell you so.”

“Why, you’ve got the letter in your pocket, Hardcastle,” said Cornet Williams.

“So I have,” said the lieutenant, “if I have not used it to light my cheroot. Yes, here it is---all right. Here you see, Wetherby, the stingy beggar, Jones, wouldn’t go to the expense of having his copper cooking vessels properly tinned every month, and, thank God, he has poisoned himself thereby.”

“But the odd part of it is,” said Cornet Williams, “that he didn’t die, as the papers say he did, on the 24th, but on the morning of the 26th!”

“Very odd, indeed!” said my father; “but I suppose Leach will say that the real spirit of priority of intelligence is publishing what happens before it really takes place. Poor Jones!”

“Yes, poor Jones!” hiccuped Lieutenant Hardcastle.

“But where’s the brandy-and-water?”

“Don’t drink any more brandy-and-water, but go home,” said my father. “It may be all very well for both of you, who did not know Jones, and never served with him, to rejoice at his death and your own promotion; but remember, my good fellows, the case is very different with me. Jones and I came out to this country together as boys; we joined the regiment about the same time; we were side by side through several campaigns; and he was not a bad fellow, after all, you know; and though my promotion will make a great difference to me, with these two boys to send home and educate, still, I assure you, I feel quite unmanned at this intelligence --- quite melancholy.”

“All right, Major!” cried Lieutenant Hardcastle; “but do give us some brandy-and-water. I say, Major! Major Wetherby. Major! Do you hear, Major? Brandy-and-water!”

My father called for brandy-and-water; and Lieutenant Hardcastle and Cornet Williams helped themselves. My father, with a melancholy air, followed their example, then sighed, and said, “It’s the common lot. None of us can escape it!”

Lieutenant Hardcastle and Cornet Williams, after they had swallowed the contents of their tumblers, lighted fresh cheroots, and drove out of the gate, yelling loudly; but their yell contained nothing of grief in it. Scarcely were they out of sight, when my father returned to my mother’s side.

“Mary!” cried he, clasping her in his arms, and kissing her forehead---“Mary, dearest, you’ll scarcely believe it, but Jones is dead --- dead as mutton!”

“Impossible! How do you know?” said my mother, anxiously.

“Hardcastle and Williams——”

“Oh, stuff!” interrupted my mother. “Hardcastle and Williams! Of course! They read it in the papers, and only came down here, on a pretence of saying they heard it elsewhere, just to drink your brandy-and-water; and I’m sure, from their voices, they had had quite enough, without your giving them any more.”

“But, my dear Mary,” said my father, “I tell you that it is a fact. Here is a letter to the commanding officer from Jones’s medical man. Jones died of not having his copper stew-pans properly tinned.”

“Good gracious!” said my mother, joyously, taking the letter from my father’s hand. “How strange! Well, it looks real, certainly; but, my dear John, we have had so many disappointments that I shall not be satisfied until I see it in the Gazette.”

It was arranged that night that my father was to apply for furlough, sell off his horses, buggy, guns, howdah, furniture, &c., and take us all home in the cold weather. My father had some 15,000 rupees (1500l.), in Company’s paper, the amount of his savings and small winnings at pool and billiards; and he hoped that his personal effects would realise an additional 5000 rupees (500l.) It was calculated that this sum, with great economy, would enable the family to proceed to England, where my brother and myself were to be placed at school, and further admit of my father and mother residing out of India for twelve or eighteen months. “At the end of that time,” said my father, “old Baxter (now the lieutenant-colonel) will be too shaky to hold on, and I shall get the command of the corps.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The cold weather came. My father sold his chargers at very good prices, and the rest of the property brought its full value.

The Ice Concern voted my father a silver drinking cup; the Mutton Club gave him a silver ink-stand; the Road Fund, a silver snuff-box; the Theatrical Company, a gold watch; and the Bank, to show its respect and regard, requested him to sit for his portrait. Covered with all these honours, and a flaming leader* in the paper (which, it was said, my father wrote himself, and was paid for, as for any other contribution), we proceeded to a place called Ghurmuckteeser Ghât; thence embarked in country boats; and after a tedious passage of eight weeks arrived in Calcutta.

I shall never forget the scene which occurred on the banks of the river when we were about to go on board the vessel in which our passage had been taken. We had brought several of our old servants with us to Calcutta: the “bearer,” or personal servant, whose duty it was to attend upon us children; my father’s bearer, who had been with him for twenty-nine years; a khidmutghar (table-servant), who had been in his service for twenty-seven years; the washerman; and my mother’s ayah (waiting-woman), who had taken employ when my father and mother were first married; and an orderly, who had got leave on purpose to see us off;---all these people crowded round us on the bank of the river, and, just as we were about to step into the boat, commenced the most awful howl that ever pierced the ear of human being. There was nothing of affectation in the grief of those poor creatures: it was genuine sorrow to which they gave utterance. My brother and myself cried bitterly at parting with these companions of our infancy; and my mother, unable any longer to conceal her emotion, also gave way to tears: ay, and my father’s eyes were moistened when he begged of them not to make such a fearful noise. When we got on board, we saw them still standing on the shore, where they remained till dark; and the next morning, when the day broke and we weighed anchor, there were they to be seen following with their eyes our noble ship, which was rapidly dropping down the river with the strong tide.

The voyage to England was less dull and tedious than most sea-voyages, for my father was constantly engaged in finding out something or other wherewith to amuse the rest of the passengers. He wrote little plays for the children, and made them act them on the quarter-deck. He got up a weekly newspaper, and made every one contribute something, which, with his own hand, he copied out into the great sheet, called “The Mermaid;” he instituted raffles at sixpence a throw, and organised a band of music out of a fife, an old fiddle, a brass basin, and a big drum. It was owing to his exertions, I believe, that there was not a single quarrel during the ninety-seven days we were at sea.

Off Weymouth, we took on board a pilot, who brought with him several greasy newspapers, the latest about a fortnight old. One of these fell into the hands of my father, and he sat down on a hen-coop to devour its contents. Suddenly his countenance changed, and he looked at a paragraph as though he doubted his own eyes; at length he sprang upon his feet, and hurried down to the cabin, where my mother was very busy packing her tranks. My brother and myself, who were always at our father’s heels, followed him.

“Mary, --- my dear Mary,” said my father, “just read that!”

My mother read aloud: ---

“Died, at Upwood, near Dorchester, Dorset, on the 20th inst., in the 50th year of his age, Edward Wetherby, Esq. M.A.”

“A sad business that, my dear, isn’t it?” said my father. “After thirty-two years of exile, coming home, and expecting to have a happy meeting with the only relation you have left in the world, and the first news you hear in the Channel is that your brother is dead.”

“Very sad,” said my mother; “but are you quite sure, my dear John, that the estate was entailed?”

“Quite sure,” said my father; “and as he has died without issue, I, of course, must succeed.”

“Robert and Charley, go on deck,” said my mother; “and don’t run about, laughing and making a noise. Your poor uncle is dead, remember.”

Now, Charley and I had never heard our uncle spoken of but twice, and upon neither occasion were the terms very affectionate. My father had once asked my uncle to lend him 300l., to enable him to assist in buying out a captain senior to himself, and my uncle declined. On the second occasion, it was when my father received a letter from my uncle, stating that he could not promise to receive us at holiday-time, in the event of our being sent to England to school, but he doubted not that he might be in a position to invite us to his house occasionally.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

We landed at Gravesend, and came up to London. What was the surprise of myself and my brother to find all the people white, for not only were we illiterate, but ill-informed on every subject that did not relate to India and the Bengal army! My father, who had left his native land at seventeen years of age, and had never since been home, seemed almost as much bewildered as ourselves; and my mother, who had never before been in London, was quite alarmed at finding herself in such crowded streets. She clutched hold of my arm as though she was afraid I should be lost, while my father held Charley with an equally tight grasp. Numbers of people turned round to look at us, for our dress was no doubt remarkable, especially our solar* hats lined with green calico, and covered with drab-coloured tesser silk.

We went to an hotel at the West-end of the town. The only people Charley and I had ever seen in black clothes and white neckcloths were clergymen, and it occurred to us, when the waiters appeared, that England must he a very curious country, if revered divines did the work of khidmutghars, or table-servants.

There was no doubt about my father being entitled to succeed to the property at Upwood, and before we had been a fortnight in England we were fairly settled in the family abode. It was a comfortable, and, for this country, a good-sized house; but to us, who had been accustomed, even in “out-stations,” to spacious and lofty rooms, with large verandahs, it semed a very diminutive place. My father said that everything was precisely in the same condition as when he had left home. Nothing had been added to the house or the furniture, and nothing taken away. Even the ancient yellow carriage in which his parents used to go out visiting was in the coach-house, and the identical dray and cart on which he had often ridden, when a boy, were under the same old shed. My uncle, we were told, spent very little of his time at Upwood. He was a Fellow of some college at Oxford, and usually resided there.

But it was only in things inanimate that my father found no change. He knew none of the people about the place, and none of them knew him. He made many inquiries, and mentioned at least fifty names, but with the exception of one very old man---a cow-doctor --- all were gone. The neighbours --- those who constituted the society of a former day --- they, too, had left the vicinity of Upwood.

“What has become of the Crawfords?” my father asked of the butler. “Are they still at the Hatch?”

“The Crawfords, sir?” replied the butler. “Well, sir, I don’t know what has become of the family, sir; but the Hatch now belongs to Mr. East, sir, who bought it, sir, after the ruin of Mr. George Crawford, sir, on the turf, sir.”

“And who is Mr. East?” asked my father.

“Mr. East, sir, is a person who made his money in trade, sir---a very respectable man, sir, I believe, and a very shrewd man --- so they say, sir.”

“And what has become of the Rexleighs of Sprite Hall? Are they still living in this part of the country?” my father inquired.

“The Rexleighs, sir, have been gone away a very long time, sir,” said the butler; “and the Hall now belongs to a Jew, who lets it to a sugar-baker, named Wilson, sir. Mr. George Rexleigh, who came in for the property, married unhappily, sir, and lived at a great rate, sir, and last of all went to prison for debt, sir.”

“And the Fairfields?” said my father --- “the Fairfields of Gore Hall?”

“The Fairfields of Gore Hall, sir? Let me see, sir. Mr. Alfred, the grandson of the old gentleman who was living there, sir, some forty years ago, came in for that property, sir, and sold it, soon after he became of age, to an attorney of Exeter, sir, who is now living there, sir, with his family.”

“It seems very clear,” said my father to my mother, after going through a long list of names familiar to him, “that I know nobody in this district, and that if we want any acquaintances we must make them.”

For the first month or six weeks my father was as happy as man could be. Putting the place in what he called good order, stocking the farm-yard, repairing all the hedges, &c. &c., and visiting the tenantry, kept him fully occupied from morning till night. My mother, too, was very busy in re-arranging the furniture and the pictures, and taking inventories of various small treasures which she raked from obscure holes and corners --- china and glass ware, which had never seen the light since my grandmother’s death, dresses of the most antique fashion and material, jewellery, lace, &c. During this month our education was never thought of; but at the expiration thereof our parents began to discuss that important question. We were so woefully backward in learning, and so forward in growth and opinion, that they were really ashamed to send us to school, and they determined therefore to have a private tutor in the house for the first year. The curate was applied to, and he seemed only too glad to accept the handsome offer which my father made him.

Ere long, my father became discontented. He caught cold, abused the climate of England, and, in comparison with the climate of India, pronounced it beastly. “Rain, rain, rain!” he would grumble. “Why doesn’t it come down all at once---rain for a couple of months, and then leave off for the rest of the year, as it does in India?” After abusing the climate, he would turn his attention to the house. “Did you ever see such a dark hole as this in your life, Mary? Did you ever see such windows? They call those windows! Why, they are not more than four feet by three wide; and these rooms are horribly small, and why haven’t they verandahs, where one may walk about and smoke his cheroot after breakfast?”

“You ought to leave off smoking in England, dear,” said my mother.

“Indeed! “ said my father.

“Well, my dear, I did not make the house; I am not responsible for the smallness of the rooms,” said my mother.

“Who said you were?” my father rejoined, leaving the room in a very unpleasant mood.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

We used to dine at three o’clock in the day. My father had shown the cook a dozen times how to make a curry, and how to boil rice, but she was not an apt pupil, and rarely or never satisfied him. “Cooking! English cooking!” he would growl. “I’m deuced sorry now I did not bring old Kurreem Bux home with me. If I’d known I should have come in for fifteen hundred a-year, besides my pay, I’ll be hanged if I would not have brought several of our old servants.”

“I’m afraid, dear, you would have found them very tedious,” suggested my mother.

“Not half so tedious as these people,” said my father. “Now, just look at that rice. Instead of every grain being independent of the other, it’s all in a pap!”

“But, my dear, you should put up with these little matters, especially when there is so much to counterbalance them in table luxuries,” said my mother.

“Pray, what do you allude to?” inquired my father.

“Why, my dear, the beef, for instance. We never had such fine beef as this in India,” said my mother.

“The deuce we had not!” my father ejaculated. “I mean to say that our mess-beef was very superior to this. It was not so fat, and so big, perhaps; but it was far sweeter, and far more tender.”

“Nor had we such fine vegetables,” said my mother.

“What!” cried my father. “Why, you must forget, Mary. Where did you ever see finer peas, cauliflowers, potatoes, and salads, than those we used to raise in our own garden?”

“And the beer?” said my mother.

“The beer?” cried my father. “Why, you never tasted such beer in your life as that we used to get from Calcutta.”

“Well, my dear, it is a great pity we came home and left so many good things behind us,” said my mother.

“And so I say,” said my father; “and I should be very glad if I was back again with the regiment. I’ll take care not to sell in a hurry, for I don’t think this present life of mine will agree with me.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

My father was anxious for my mother to observe the improvement in a horse which he had lately purchased, and we all went into the stable-yard. The horse was brought out.

“You got him shod to-day, after all?” said my father to the groom, when the animal made his appearance.

“Yes, sir,” said the groom.

“And the rascal has pricked him!” said my father. “Why, he’s as lame as a cat. Have that near fore-shoe removed immediately. Send for the fellow at once.”

Then, turning to my mother, he observed,---

“Now, if I were to give this farrier a thrashing for laming my horse --- as I should have done had this happened in my troop --- he would take me before a magistrate, and I might be committed to the Quarter Sessions. A nice country this, where you can’t get summary satisfaction for such a wrong! The niggers, in my opinion, shoe horses much better than your English farriers.”

“Why, my dear, you used always to be complaining in India how badly they shod your horses,” said my mother.

“Did I complain?” said my father. “If I did, it was because I did not know how much worse they do the work elsewhere.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

It was dark. The candles were lighted, and we were about to have tea. My father was sitting over the fire, with his feet upon the fender, smoking one of the last of his Manilla cheroots, when my mother came into the room in a state of great excitement, exclaiming ---

“I never knew anything so provoking in my life!”

“What’s the matter, my dear?” asked my father.

“Why, that stupid woman!” said my mother. “I told her to clean those ivory-handled hair-brushes, and she has put them in hot water, and ruined them. Really, it is enough to drive one mad!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t allow such trifles to ruffle me,” said my father, “especially as you have so much to counterbalance them.”

“Now, don’t talk in that way, John,” said my mother.

“Why, my dear,” said my father, “I am only talking as you did at dinner to-day.”

My mother left the room in a rage, and in a few minutes after we heard her voice upstairs. She appeared to he very angry indeed. My father called to her, and she came down into the dining-room, where we all were.

“If I were you, Mary,” said my father, kindly, “I would not annoy myself any more about those paltry hair-brushes. I’ll get you another pair from Bombay, old woman.”

“My beloved John,” said my mother, now speaking as though she entirely sympathised with her husband’s grievances, “it is not the hair-brushes that has so put me out!”

“Well, what is it?” said my father.

“Why, that laundress!” said my mother; “she has destroyed the whole of my beautiful Dacca muslin dresses, and all those nice ‘chicken’-work collars, which cost so much money, and which I cannot replace in this country. She told me she understood getting these things up, and I, of course, believed her. During the eighteen years that the old dhoby* was in our service, he did not destroy more than two collars and one cambric handkerchief, and those he offered to replace out of his pay.”

“It is just the same with my shirts,” said my father. “It is very little linen that we use, comparatively speaking, in this unclean country, but even that little is very badly washed. Look at the wristband of this shirt; a kite’s foot is snow-white in comparison.”

At this moment the servant came in with the county newspaper, to which my father had subscribed. He opened it with a sigh, and after looking at it for a few minutes, threw it down, in disgust, on the hearth-rug.

“Is there nothing in the paper?” inquired my mother.

“Nothing,” said my father. “It is a folly to take it in; there’s never two minutes’ reading in it. It is not like the ‘Agra Ukbar.’ There we knew everybody mentioned in the Domestic Occurrences; every advertisement we took some interest in; every letter touched upon a topic on which we could offer an opinion; and as for the leaders, why, we used to devour them; but here, who cares to know about Mrs. Joseph Carter having twins? who cares about Mr. Jeremiah Simpson being married to Miss Louisa Penfold? or the death of Mr. Gustavus Brown, aged seventy-nine years? What do I care about cattle-shows and Corn-laws, and whether this minister or that minister ought to govern the country? And if you come to a good style of writing, hang me if I would not back old Tandy, or even myself, to beat all these fellows hollow.”

My mother was so very much annoyed with the washerwoman for the damage she had done to the linen, that my father was allowed to enumerate his manifold grievances without the slightest interruption.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The neighbours began to call at Upwood, and my father and mother entered into their society. But my father, who had been a sort of “picture card” in the East, owing to the ability and literary power for which he had credit, found (or fancied) himself “a mere cypher” in his native county. In India he was a tremendous talker, and usually spoke in a loud sonorous voice; but in England he was silent, reserved, and seemingly timid. If they could have got him upon “half batta,” “the superiority of the regular over the irregular cavalry,” “the furlough regulations,” or, indeed, any of the various questions on which he was accustomed to write and converse, he would have astounded his hearers with the mass of facts which he had stored in his memory, and the vigour with which he gave utterance to his thoughts: but his sympathies were now but rarely or never aroused, and he must have felt that he was regarded, if. not as a stupid person, anything but a very clever fellow.

My father had some business in London which required his personal attendance at the India House. He left us at Upwood, and went to town alone, on the top of the coach, for in those days railroads were confined to the north of England. He was absent for ten days; and on his return he told us all that he had seen. With the theatres he pronounced himself awfully disappointed. The “appliances,” he admitted, were very superior to those of the theatre over which he presided in India; also the scenery department: but as for the acting and the dresses, he declared that there was no playhouse in London that could hold a candle to the Station Theatre of Meerut.

My mother, who had got over the annoyance caused by the destruction of her linen, began to remind my father---

“Why, my dear,” said she, “you did nothing but complain from morning till night about your theatrical company in India. You used to say that when they were sober they did not know how to act, or acted without spirit, and when they were drunk they forgot the words of their parts. Why, John, you never brought out a single play without being for two days previous to its performance in a state of anxiety which it was quite painful to witness.”

“Such things occurred sometimes latterly,” said my father, “but not in my earlier days; the days of P——r, H——y T——rs, H——y T——t, and myself?”

“My dear John,” said my mother, “surely you forget? Why, I never knew you come home after a performance without declaring that you would throw up the management, and never have anything more to do with the theatre: but unfortunately, like other bad habits, it was too strong to be shaken off.”

This conversation was prolonged until ten o’clock, at which hour we all retired to bed.

“Bed at ten!” grumbled my father, as he lighted his candle --- “bed at ten! for a man who has been accustomed to begin the evening at midnight! Bed at ten! Oh, dear!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

By slow degrees, however, my father became more reconciled to Upwood, and yearned less after India and his old companions whom he had left behind him; albeit whenever he saw his French-grey uniform spread out upon the hedge, to air it and keep the insects from it, or whenever his sword was looked to, to see that the rust was not eating into the blade, he would become moody and discontented. But the fits were less violent and of shorter duration than formerly. He found himself compelled to take an interest in the persons and things around him, and to make the best of what he considered a miserable lot in this world, after upwards of thirty years’ service in a country which, when in it, he was perpetually abusing.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

A few years passed away, and my brother and myself had made very considerable progress in our studies, under the tuition of the curate. When we began to learn our strides were certainly gigantic. We were now soon sent to read with a private tutor in Wales, who undertook to prepare us for Oxford --- my father having resolved that I should go to the Bar, and my brother enter the Church.

In a few years the change that had come over my father was truly wonderful. He was no longer “a cypher” in his own opinion, but the most important person in the neighbourhood. He had read up all the politics of the day, and took great interest in elections and Government measures. Though he received the Indian papers regularly by every mail, he very rarely stript off their covers. His original leave having expired, and his “extension of leave” also, he offered his regiment a step, if they would pay him down a certain sum of money. His offer was accepted, and he retired from the service.

When I was in my nineteenth year, I was sent to the University of Oxford, on an allowance of 300l. per annum, with strict injunctions, which I faithfully promised to observe, not to get into debt, but pay ready money for everything. I introduced myself to many of my uncle’s friends, who received me with great kindness, and gave me an abundance of excellent advice. I believe I conducted myself with propriety, and read tolerably hard until the end of my first term, when I went up to town with several men who were older than myself; and having some 30l. or 40l. in my purse, which I had saved out of my allowance, I indulged in a variety of pleasures until then quite new to me. My money exhausted, I took the coach for Upwood, and had a very happy meeting with my father and mother. My brother was still in Wales, prosecuting his studies.

One day, in my rambles, I met a gentleman who was “under a cloud,” a Mr. Revelle. He had been concerned in a gambling affair, to the very serious detriment of his character. No one associated with him. I found myself in conversation with Mr. Revelle, with whose manners and address I soon became charmed. Without any exception, he was the most chatty and agreeable person I had ever talked to. He had been at Oxford, and at the same college to which I belonged. He was a contemporary of my late uncle, whom, he said, he knew intimately. When we neared Mr. Revelle’s house, he invited me to come in, and look at a model “funny” of his own construction. I felt an awkwardness in accepting his invitation under the circumstances, but he asked me so prettily, it was impossible to refuse. When we entered the house I was introduced to a young lady, Miss Revelle, Mr. Revelle’s daughter. The moment I beheld her, heard her speak, I was ready to lay my heart at the darling’s feet.

Mr. Revelle produced his funny, which I, of course, approved of and admired exceedingly, albeit I scarcely looked at it, for my eyes were rivetted on Sophy---that was her name, Sophy---Sophy Revelle. I instantly made up my boyish mind that Mr. Revelle was a persecuted man; that his accusers were liars and slanderers; that it was utterly impossible he could be guilty of anything unfair or dishonourable.

Mr. Revelle invited me to stay dinner (nothing could exceed his civility), but I was unable to do so. We were to have guests at home that evening, and I was expected to assist in entertaining them.

I was in love with Sophy Revelle. My brain was filled with her. Her beautiful hazel eyes, and her dark brown hair, which fell in luxuriant curls on her white shoulders, her small smooth forehead, and chiselled mouth and chin, and her pretty little teeth, haunted me, and robbed me of my rest. I lay awake the whole night thinking of Sophy, wondering if she had a lover. Sophy was not more than sixteen when I first saw her.

The next day was Sunday, and I went to church in the hope of seeing Sophy. That hope was realised. There she sat, alone, in all her loveliness, in a pew immediately opposite to ours. My eyes met Sophy’s several times, and more than once I beheld her blush; and on one occasion I fancied I could perceive a smile on her dear cheeks. When the service was over, I made some excuse for remaining behind, and my father and mother went home. I kept my eyes upon Sophy, and by the time she had reached the lane which led to her father’s house, I was by her side. And I offered her my arm. It would be impossible to describe the thrill of joy which ran through my whole frame, and made every nerve tingle, when Sophy’s arm first was linked in mine. I endeavoured to talk to her, but speech forsook me. From the time I overtook her in the lane until we reached her abode, the distance of a mile was leisurely walked over, but we did not exchange half-a-dozen remarks.

Mr. Revelle appeared delighted to see me; asked me to join them at luncheon, which was ready on the table; thanked me very cordially for escorting his daughter to her home; and in a few moments dispelled that ill-at-ease sort of feeling which most young men would have experienced under similar circumstances. I was convinced that Mr. Revelle saw that I was very much struck with his daughter, and I was further convinced that Sophy was aware how much I admired her; but still I was perplexed with this doubt--- Was her her heart still her own? was she at liberty to listen to me as her lover? That was all I yearned to know, for I was vain enough to think if Sophy had not yet settled her affections on some other swain, I should prove irresistible in her sight.

After luncheon, Mr. Revelle showed me his horses and his dogs, and then we walked in the garden together, where, to my great joy, Sophy joined us. Mr. Revelle left us alone for a brief while, certainly for not more than half-an-hour; but brief as was the space, I satisfied myself that Sophy had not a lover---had never dreamt of love. For the present, that was all that I wanted to know.

Again I was invited to stay and dine, and again I pleaded an engagement as an excuse. The truth was, I had a scheme in my head for bringing Mr. Revelle and my father together, and making them acquainted. This, I thought, would make my mother on visiting terms with Sophy; and thus I should have endless opportunities of seeing her, talking to her, and making love to her. I was fearful, therefore, lest by remaining at Mr. Revelle’s to dinner I might mar my plot, and cut off all hope of establishing an intimacy between the two families, by arousing a suspicion that Sophy had allured me.

That evening I “sounded” my father, and found that his opinion of Mr. Revelle had been already formed; and knowing him to be a man of very strong prejudices, I felt that the idea of bringing them together must be abandoned. My mother, too, was decidedly against Mr. Revelle, whom she called “a horrid man.” I had now to choose whether I should visit Mr. Revelle’s house stealthily, and carry on a clandestine correspondence with his daughter, or whether I should relinquish dear Sophy, and think no more of her. As the reader will readily imagine, Sophy was with me superior to all earthly considerations, and I fully determined to engage myself to her before going up to Oxford to keep my second term.

The love-making of all young couples is so much alike, and has been so often described, that I shall not dwell on the delightful hours which were spent by Sophy and myself when we were “all alone.” Conscious that I loved her, she was truly happy; and conscious that she loved me, I would not have changed places with the proudest prince in existence. But, alas! this happiness was destined to be of very short duration. The circumstance of my constantly visiting at Mr. Revelle’s house became known to my father and mother. Some of our kind friends brought it to their notice; and my father, who had been very “susceptible” himself when he was about the same age as I was then, instantly conjectured that Sophy, of whose beauty he used to speak in warm terms, had infatuated me.

“And so you have struck up an acquaintance with that man Revelle, I hear; and you go there pretty often?” said my father, one day after dinner, when my mother had retired, and left us to ourselves.

“Yes,” said I.

“And what sort of a person do you find him?” he inquired, with an arch smile playing over his mouth.

“Very agreeable company,” was my reply.

“And the daughter,” he continued---“the pretty little girl that comes to church---is she amiable, accomplished, and witty, eh?”

“Yes,” said I, “she is a charming person. I have a very great regard for her.”

“Then the sooner you get rid of it the better,” said my father, abruptly. “In the first place, you are too young to think of such nonsense, which would interfere with your studies; and, in the second place, you could never, in your senses, dream of connecting yourself with a man who has irretrievably lost his character and position in society.”

“Father,” said I, “I am sorry that I concealed from you that I have been a constant visitor at Mr. Revelle’s house. But I will not deceive you any further. I am in love with Sophy Revelle, and she is in love with me; and we have agreed to be united as soon as I have taken my degree at College.”

“Oh, that’s the arrangement, is it?” said my father. “You are to marry Revelle’s daughter when you have taken your degree? Well, I consent to that; but understand me---that with my assistance you’ll not take any degree whatsoever; for unless you give up this foolish whim, you shall not return to Oxford; and if you make a fool of yourself by marrying the girl when you become of age, I’ll cut you off without anything to your name, and make your brother my heir.”

“You forget,” said I, “that this property is entailed, and that you have only a life interest in it.”

I would have given the whole world if I could have recalled this remark. My father gave me a look expressive of horror and disgust. Keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon me, he said,---

“Robert, I see through it all. Revelle told you that! Deny it if you can. Revelle has encouraged you to make advances to his daughter. You know he has.”

Mr. Revelle, certainly, was my authority for saying that the estate was entailed, and I was aware that he had been friendly to the attachment which had sprung up between Sophy and myself. I did not, therefore, contradict my father.

“Robert!” said he, sternly, “you know I am not a person to be trifled with. Now, hear my resolution: Instead of going back to Oxford, you shall go out to India, in the army, and there make your way in the world, as I had to do, without any help from home. You shall either do that, or you shall starve, or persuade Revelle to keep you till I die, and you succeed to Upwood.”

My mother seemed even more annoyed at what she was pleased to call my “infamous conduct” than was my father; and, to my surprise and dismay, she fully approved of my being transported at once to India for, perhaps, the term of my natural life. I told Mr. Revelle all that had occurred, with the exception of those passages which would have given him personal offence; and he took that sensible view of the whole affair which might have been looked for from a man who had seen a great deal of the world. He advised me not to oppose my father, but to meet his wishes in every respect, even unto going out to India.

“When you are old enough to marry, and have got your lieutenancy” (he thus concluded his remarks), “you can, if both of you are of the same mind, join hands; and meanwhile there will be nothing to prevent your corresponding; at least, I shall have no sort of objection.”

There was something so cold and cruel in this matter-of-fact way in which our separation was spoken of, that I was ready to faint in Mr. Revelle’s presence. And poor Sophy! Well, it was some consolation to think that she shared all the bitterness I experienced in the reflection that I was about to be removed to a far country, and that years would elapse before we met again.

A commission in the Honourable East India Company’s Cavalry was obtained for me, and I was forced to embark for Calcutta.

Chapter II.

The ship in which my passage had been taken was what was called “a favourite ship.” She was usually full of passengers, and on this occasion had not less than forty-seven: thirty-two out of that number were young ladies for the Indian market; several were returning to their relations after receiving an education at home; but the bulk were consigned to friends whose duty it would he to get them well married as speedily as possible. Many of these girls were under the care of the captain and his wife; but some of them were under the care of no one, except themselves. Amongst this number was a Miss Fletcher, whose place at the cuddy-table was immediately opposite to mine; she was very pretty, and I must confess that every day I looked more earnestly at her, and thought less of dear Sophy, to whom I was plighted. At first I had kept aloof from the rest of the voyagers, but after we had been about a month at sea I began to cultivate Miss Fletcher; I used to read to her on the poop, walk with her after dinner, listen to all her troubles (she had many imaginary ones), and at lengih I made a point of always escorting her to her cabin door when she retired, and there bid her “good night.” Miss Fletcher seemed pleased with my attentions, and before long our mutual regard for each other became conspicuous; but we never had an opportunity of being alone even for a few minutes; there was always some ear close at hand to catch every word that escaped our lips, or some eye to observe our tender glances.

One night, off the Cape of Good Hope, it came on to blow a gale of wind; and about two o’clock in the morning we shipped a heavy sea, which caused an awful commotion on board. There was a simultaneous rush, on the part of all the ladies, from their cabins. Such a show of night-caps I had never before beheld. I came out of my cabin, and saw dear Miss Fletcher with her long brown hair dishevelled and hanging down her back, and her eyes starting from her head.

“Oh, Mr. Wetherby!” she exclaimed, on observing me, “will the ship be lost?” and thereupon, in a most theatrical fashion, she threw herself into my arms.

It was a heavenly burthen certainly, but I was much too nervous, in consequence of her alarm, to bear it comfortably. In reply to her question, I said,---

“Oh, no! we shall not be lost; don’t be frightened.” And then, placing my lips close to her ear, I said, in a low tone of voice, “Ellen, dearest Ellen, there is no danger.”

At this moment we shipped another sea. The ladies shrieked in concert; and, to make matters worse, the quartermaster rushed down into the steerage, where we all were, seized the lamp, carried it away (into a sailroom, I believe), and left us in total darkness.

“All is over!” cried Ellen, clinging to me. “Robert, all is over! we are sinking!”

I thought so too, for we were drenched, and up to our ankles in salt water; but I contrived to say or stammer,---

“Oh no, Ellen, there is still hope; and if we do go down, it will be in each other’s arms!”

I could not help kissing her tenderly; and no sooner had I done so than Sophy’s dear face, bathed in tears as when I last saw her, flitted before me. What a perjured villain I acknowledged myself in my own heart! What would I not have given had Ellen Fletcher spurned me just then, instead of resting her head upon my shoulder!

The gale moderated, the ladies recovered from their fright, and everybody sought his or her cabin to take some rest. As for me, I was almost driven mad by self-reproach. At first I resolved not to leave my cabin for the remainder of the voyage; but then, I thought, this would seem odd, and moreover it would be unjust to Miss Fletcher, to whom I intended to make a confession as soon as I had a good opportunity. Towards evening I made my toilet, and went on deck. Miss Fletcher overpowered me with thanks for my kindness to her on the past night. Oh, if I could only have repulsed her! But that was not in my power. After a rapid and desultory conversation we descended together to the cuddy; there commenced a game of chess; trod upon each other’s toes during its continuance; and when it was over took a walk together on the quarterdeck. When I was in Ellen’s company I was happy, but when I was alone, my mind was always on the rack, contemplating my own infamy and faithlessness. We neared Calcutta, and sighted the floating light (the beacon near which the pilots cruise), and I became desperate. I fancied that my avowal to Ellen of my love for Sophy would break her heart; and yet what was I to do? I observed that Ellen had for some days past been more pensive than formerly, and rather more formal and distant towards me in her manners; this I attributed to some involuntary want of attention on my part.

Ellen was seated in an easy chair, near the wheel, knitting a purse. I approached her.

“Bring that camp-stool near me,” said she; “I wish to talk to you.”

“How very industrious you appear,” said I, when I had taken my seat by her side.

“Yes,” she replied with a smile and a sigh, which were beautifully blended; “I am anxious to get this finished by to-morrow. Do you admire it?”

“Very much indeed,” said I.

“I am glad of that,” said she; “it is for you. Mind you never part with it, but keep it always for my sake --- will you?”

I promised her never to allow it to be out of my sight.

“What I want to say to you is this,” said Ellen, working away as fast as possible. “You know we have had a very pleasant flirtation; and to tell you the honest truth, I am very fond of you; you are a great favourite of mine; but the fact is --- now don’t be offended---promise me you won’t be offended---will you?”

“What is the fact?” I inquired, anxiously.

“Why, the fact is,” said Ellen, “I have come out to India on purpose to be married.”

“Have you?” said I, grasping her hand, and relieved beyond measure even when she had gone thus far.

“Yes,” she continued; “I have come out to marry a merchant. He is very rich, and almost old enough to he my papa; but --- why, you don’t seem at all unhappy! I was afraid you would be miserable, and I declare you are laughing! Surely you did not know of this, and have only been making a fool of me, when I thought I was making such a fool of you?”

“My dear Miss Fletcher,” said I, in the most joyous tone of voice, “I have been the most miserable of creatures ever since that night off the Cape, when it blew so hard——”

“And I pretended to be so dreadfully frightened, and you talked about our dying in each other’s arms!” interrupted Ellen.

“Ever since that night I have longed to tell you,” said I, “how unworthy I am of your affection---your notice; that my heart is another’s.” Here I told her of my love for Sophy, and how it had brought me out to India.

“Oh, how delightful!” exclaimed Ellen. “I began to fear that, wounded by my conduct, you might create a disturbance when we got on shore, and perhaps want to shoot my merchant. Young men, you know, are often so very foolish. Now, then, remember we are to be always the best friends in the world; but pray never allude to that night off the Cape: it was very wicked of me, but I could not help it.” She laughed, but a crimson hue was spread over her face and neck.

Ellen’s disclosure made me like her even more than I had done before I heard it. I now felt safe, and that Sophy was in no danger of losing me, while at the same time I could amuse myself with Ellen as a friend,--- so witty, so beautiful, and so enchanting in her manners.

The next day a steamer came close to our vessel. The captain exclaimed,---

“Why, it’s Manson!”

“That’s my merchant,” said Ellen, in a whisper to me. “Oh, give me the spy-glass, and let me look at him.”

After arranging the focus, and bringing the glass to bear for her on the gentleman who was pointed out as Manson, Ellen remarked to me with a nudge of her elbow,---

“Is he not rather stout?”

“You have never seen him?” said I.

“No,” said Ellen. “He wrote home for a pretty wife, and I am that romantic victim.”

Manson, who had chartered the steamer at a cost of 50l. per day, now boarded us, and was introduced to his bride elect, with whom he seemed quite satisfied. After a few hours he proposed taking as many of the passengers as the steamer could accommodate to Calcutta. A married couple and two spinsters, besides Ellen and myself, formed the party.

“I say, Wetherby, you are in luck,” observed the chief officer to me, when I went to say good-bye to him. “Manson keeps one of the best houses in Calcutta, and lives in a princely style, sir.”

When we arrived at Prinsep’s ghât (a wharf where passengers usually land), we found several carriages, and a small army of servants, apparently waiting for us. Manson, seemingly as a matter of course, took the whole of us to his house in Chouringhee. It was a truly magnificent edifice, and furnished in the most costly and extravagant fashion. There was an air of splendour and wealth about everything connected with Manson’s establishment, which I could observe made a very pleasant impression on Ellen’s mind. Her eyes sparkled with joy as she looked around her, though she struggled to conceal that she was elated.

Mr. Manson was between forty and fifty years of age, not bad-looking, but “rather stout” (as Ellen had justly remarked). His manners were warm and courteous, and he seemed to be the very personification of what is termed “a good-hearted fellow.” He not only kept the best house in Calcutta, but the best horses and equipages, the best wines, the best billiard-table,---in short, it was his vanity to have the best of everything; all that he sighed for was the prettiest wife in India, and in Ellen his ambition was fully gratified.

When I saw Ellen in the large and well-lighted drawing-room, with diamond and ruby bracelets on her wrists, and a string of costly pearls in her hair, and valuable rings on her fingers, seated at the piano on the first evening she had spent on the shores of India, I could not help saying to myself,---”Well, you would have been a great fool to have given up all this to share the fortunes of a poor wretch of a Cornet like me.”

Manson’s firm---that of Borderdaile, Manson, and Briggs---was the most flourishing house in Calcutta. Everything had been prepared for the wedding, and it came off on the third evening after our arrival. I thought this very sharp work, but was informed it was by no means uncommon. The ceremony was performed at St. John’s Church, in the presence of all Manson’s friends, who attended, according to invitation and custom, in large white favours. The Governor-general’s staff were present, likewise all the leading officials, military officers, and members of the Bar; for Manson was, in those days, what is vulgarly but forcibly described as no end of a swell .The church was literally crowded with gentlemen in every kind of uniform (full dress), and ladies in the gayest costume. Having come with the wedding-party, I, in my grey and silver uniform (in which I thought myself extremely fine), had standing-room near the bride, who looked remarkably well and lady-like. For the life of me, I could not help thinking of that night off the Cape, when the quartermaster took away the lamp, and left us in the dark. The wedding over, Manson and his wife repaired to Barrackpore (a place about twelve or thirteen miles from Calcutta) to spend the honeymoon; and the spectators, in their “favours,” went to enjoy their evening drive on the esplanade, discuss the scene they had just witnessed, and speculate on the probable happiness or otherwise of the match. Mounted on one of Manson’s favourite Arabs, I, too, joined that glittering throng, and had the honour of an invitation to dine in the fort from an officer whom I had met at Manson’s on the previous evening.

It is extraordinary how intimate and familiar people become in the East, even on the shortest acquaintance. What was my surprise and confusion on hearing myself thus accosted at the mess-table by an officer with whom I had not exchanged half-a-dozen words:---

“I say, Cornet, they say you carried on immensely with that girl on the passage out, and that you were always praying for a gale of wind!”

“Yes,” said my host (before I had time to reply), “and the passengers thought she would throw Manson overboard when she got on shore, and take up with you.”

“Is it not rather cheeky of you,” said an ensign to whom I had never spoken, “to stick your spoon up in the old boy’s abode? I like you for that.”

“Make him your agent,” said a fourth, who was also a stranger to me. “He has lots of tin, and won’t bother you when you have overdrawn your account.”

In the plenitude of my inexperience, I remarked, with reference to the last observation, that I had my pay, which, with the horse allowance, was between 300l. and 400l. a-year, and that I should not require any agent.

A shout of laughter followed the expression of this sentiment of mine, and I thought the company very rude, though I joined in their laughter to conceal my awkwardness.

“You are all right,” said my host, in a congratulatory tone of voice. “When Manson comes back, you know, he will be at his office all day long, and if you play your cards well, you will be her A.D.C. Mind, when you are helping her to form her dinner-parties, that you invariably put me on the list. Just say to her, ‘The affair will be awfully dull and flat unless we have Captain Staves to contribute to the hilarity of the evening.’”

“Do you know what are an aide-de-camp’s qualifications?” said the ensign to me.

“No,” I replied.

He forthwith favoured me with them, and raised another uproarious laugh at my expense.

I drank a good deal of champagne at dinner that night, and became jovial and dismal alternately; and by the time we retired to the billiard-room, I was bordering on downright inebriety. Two glasses of brandy and soda-water settled the business, and there I sat on the couch, feeling, looking, thinking, and talking (I have no doubt), very like a consummate fool.

“I say, Cornet, we are all coming to breakfast with you to-morrow, at about half-past one,” said the ensign, taking a seat beside me.

“That’s right,” said I; “ do, old boy. Will Staves come?”

“Oh, yes, everybody,” said the ensign. “About fourteen or fifteen of us. But have covers laid for twenty.”

“All right,” said I, “all right. Covers for twenty.” And, repeating these words, I fell fast asleep. At three in the morning, I was aroused by Captain Staves and the ensign. They wished to take me home in their buggy. The object of this attention was twofold; it was partly to see me safely in bed, and partly to hear me give the necessary directions to the khansamah (butler) touching the breakfast. We ordered every delicacy that could be procured, and impressed upon the khansamah that twenty people would require a goodly quantity of champagne, hock, and claret, and Staves enjoined him to remember that it must be well iced. The khansamah uttered the word Atcha, which was tantamount to the remark I made when the ensign proposed the breakfast, --- all right.

The next morning, when I went downstairs, I was horror-struck at beholding the table laid for a large party. I remembered something of what had passed, but I indulged the hope that it was a dream. The khansamah made his appearance, opened a bottle of champagne, and begged of me to take a glass and satisfy myself that it was iced to perfection. The wine did me good in curing my headache; but it did not dispel the pain I was labouring under when I contemplated the gross breach of hospitality of which I had been guilty.

The guests came, and sat down to one of the most sumptuous repasts that ever was served. Only two places were vacant. When we had ate and drunk sufficiently, we repaired to the billiard-room, where Manson’s choice cheroots were smoked by every one in great profusion; and play, on which heavy sums were staked, was carried on till sunset. It was on this occasion that I first touched a cue, and gave promise of much skill.

When Manson and his wife returned to Calcutta, at the end of the week, I took an opportunity of speaking to him, and explaining how sensible I was of the impropriety of my conduct in asking a large party to his house in his absence; and I assured him that my only excuse was, that I had taken too much champagne at the mess.

“My dear fellow,” said Manson, laying his hand on my shoulder, “don’t talk of it. I am delighted you entertained them, and hope they enjoyed themselves. They are all friends of mine, and a more hospitable set of men never breathed. By-the-bye, don’t let me forget to thank you for the great kindness and attention you showed to my dear wife on board the ship. She tells me that without you the passage would have been insufferably tedious.”

Ellen (I must still call her Ellen) told me next day, when we were alone, that, fearful lest some of our fellow-passengers should tell tales which might possibly reach Manson’s ears, she had deemed it prudent to prepare his mind by casually confessing to him, in the first instance, that we had been inseparables. I was further delighted to hear from Ellen’s lips that Manson had taken a great fancy for me --- that he liked me exceedingly.

It was, indeed, a very happy life that I led while a guest of Manson. Now and then Ellen would tease me, when we were alone, by asking me questions about “Sophy,” and laughing at me; but, generally, she was very kind, and, I must say, my Platonic regard for her was remarkably ardent. At last, after waiting six weeks in Calcutta (during the whole of that period I was staving with the Mansons, and treated as one of the family), I was posted to the 12th Light Cavalry--- my father’s old regiment---the regiment in which I had been born and reared until I was twelve years of age. It was then quartered at Cawnpore, and thither I proceeded to join.

My parting with Ellen was almost as painful as my parting with “dear Sophy.” We were both low-spirited; and we promised to write to each other every week. Ellen, with her own pretty hands, packed my palankeen, and my pittarehs (boxes which are suspended to each end of a stout bamboo, and carried on men’s shoulders). She showed me where to find the cheroots, and the sherry, and the biscuits, when I required them on the journey; and she placed an old shoe beneath my pillow, to make me dream of her (she said) upon the dreary road. I was for resigning the service, and remaining in Ellen’s; but she good-humouredly replied, “Oh, no! harm would come of it. Remember Sophy. Go where glory waits thee, and distinguish yourself. If Manson were here, you should have half-a-dozen kisses, but as he is not, you shall only have one---and that I’ll tell him of. There, there --- that’s enough; there, there, now---no more!”

I tore myself away, and went weeping out of her sight. Before I had reached Cox’s bungalow, the first stage from Calcutta, I had drowned my feelings in the sherry, and settled myself to sleep.

I joined the regiment, and found old Baxter still in command. I remembered his red face well, and, with very few exceptions, the whole of the officers and their wives were familiar to me. They received me with great warmth, and I felt amongst them completely at home. Old Subahdars and Havildars (native officers) who had served for many years with my father, came to pay their respects to me, and called me frequently Baba (child). Many of our old servants, too, came and cracked their knuckles over my head (a common practice in the East, expressive of devotion), and cried with joy at seeing me again. When I landed in India again I had entirely forgotten my Hindustanee, and could scarcely speak a word; but before I had been a fortnight with my regiment I could discourse with almost as much ease and fluency as any native. The rapidity with which my knowledge of the native tongue came back to me was miraculous.

As a boy, I was a pet with all the people in the corps, and as a young man I had not grown out of their liking. The ladies of the regiment, whenever they detected any imperfections in my character, would not fail to point them out; and my senior officers kept as sharp an eye upon my conduct as though each had been an elder and more prudent brother.

I began to feel that my wings were clipped in the 12th Light Cavalry. The interest taken in my welfare was a personal annoyance, and I heartily wished that I had been posted to some other corps, which I should have joined as a perfect stranger. If I gave a party, or made a foolish bet at billiards, or, in short, did anything out of the common, as other cornets frequently did, I was twitted with “Bobby, what would your governor say to this?”---while Mrs. Baxter, or Mrs. Green, or Mrs. Somebody else, was constantly threatening to inform my mother what a nice youth I was. In a word, I felt disgusted at having so many kind friends, who, having known me as a child, seemed resolved never to look upon me as a man. Other cornets could occasionally talk grand, and their fictions--- I believe most of their adventures were fictitious --- were attentively listened to; but in this luxury I was never allowed the slightest indulgence. Even when Manson’s name happened to be mentioned, and I boasted of the run I had of that house, I used to observe half-a-dozen of my brother-officers winking at each other; and then came some such exclamation as this: “Bobby, draw it mild, please! You will rival your governor in time, no doubt; but you must not expect to do it all at once.”

Ere long I began to detest the regiment, and communicated my sorrows to Mrs. Manson, with whom I continued to correspond regularly. What was my delight on reading one of her letters beginning thus:--- “Never mind; I’ll get you a staff appointment at Calcutta, and then you will be happy.”

On the strength of this I went to mess in very high spirits. I there publicly denounced regimental duty as horribly slow; but intimated that I should soon have done with it, as I intended to get staff-employ immediately.

“Bobby,” said the senior captain, “your father was always on the point of getting staff-employ. He was once within an ace (so he said) of being Resident at Lucnow. He then came down to the Commissionership of Sirsa; after that, he was booked for the next vacancy in the Judge-advocate-general’s department. Now, although he was well qualified for any of these offices, he had not one rap of interest of any sort or kind, and had to stick to his regiment till he went home. What interest have you I should like to know?”

“I have immense interest with the Governor-general,” said I, bumptiously. “He took great notice of me when I was in Calcutta.”

“Now, Bobby,” said old Baxter, “in the first place, look here. Although you speak the bolé (conversational tongue) like a nigger, you cannot read or write Hindostanee; and without that you can’t pass, and unless you pass, you can’t get staff-employ. In the second place, you must be three years with your regiment, and you have only been seven months. Now, how are you to get over these standing regulations of Government?”

“That’s Government’s business, Colonel,” said I, stroking my beardless chin. “If Government cannot do without me, Government will manage all that, I suppose.”

For some time I was the laughing-stock of all Cawnpore. My sanity was disputed by many persons, while others imagined I intended my remarks for wit; but, to the astonishment of all, the “Gazette” soon contained “Cornet Robert Wetherby, of the 12th L. C.” Yes; there was I appointed to a very comfortable berth, with 500 rupees (50l.) per mensem staff salary, and little or nothing to do. It was just the thing to suit me, and I was in ecstasies. My brother-officers wanted to know how I managed it; but I was contented with saying, “Interest, interest---personal interest: nothing else, I assure you.”

I called upon all the military people in the station to take leave, and was treated with great cordiality on the part of the ladies (with one exception, which I will presently mention), and envious looks on the part of their husbands. Fancying myself a person of tremendous importance, I had acquired an incipient swagger, even before leaving Cawnpove for the metropolis.

The “exception” which I have just alluded to was a Mrs. Brill, the wife of Lieutenant Brill, of my own regiment. Brill had been a very hard drinker, and was going rapidly to the dogs, or the grave, when Mrs. Brill (then Mrs. Leveson, who was the widow of an assistant-surgeon) was thrown in his way. She was older than Brill by several years; and she was, besides, a “country-born.” She was rather more than a brunette. She was of a very dark complexion; and plain---very plain; and thin---very thin. No one but a country-born could be anything like so thin. And she was a woman of the most violent temper and imperative disposition. It was said that she coaxed poor Brill at first, and then bullied him into marrying her, by threatening to publish his letters to her. The ladies of the regiment hated Mrs. Brill, and (such is the matter-of-fact way in which matrimonial alliances are looked upon even in the East) thought that poor Brill had little to congratulate himself upon in being “saved” (as he used to express it) “from a premature end.”

Mrs. Brill never allowed her husband to drink more than one bottle of beer a-day at his own expense. He might get drunk as often as he had a chance at other people’s houses (and this was not often, for she kept him almost constantly at home), without incurring her displeasure. She pinched Brill, too, in his diet; that is to say, she fed him principally upon kid’s flesh and vegetable curry. And she frequently exposed Brill to the annoyance of being periodically a defendant at the Court of Requests, for not paying his servants---the truth being that it was his “Missis” who had such a horror of parting with the coin which came into her hands. Poor Brill never saw a single rupee of his pay after it had found its way into Mrs. Brill’s almirah (wardrobe). She had made Brill study very hard for several years, and he was certainly one of the best Oriental scholars in the service. He could read, write, and speak either Persian, Oordoo, or Hindee, with wonderful accuracy and readiness. Mrs. Brill had trained him for staff-employ, upon which she had set her heart, on purpose for the pay; for she loved, adored, worshipped gold. That feeling she inherited, with many others, from her mother’s side of the family. How such a man as Brill, who was still a very good-looking fellow, and who had been as dashing a youth as ever sprang into a saddle, could have united himself to such a miserable-looking, ill-tempered, ill-conditioned, worse than vulgar-minded, black, skinny, frog-voiced half-caste, was indeed a miracle; but, what was more miraculous still, he was not only grateful to her for having reformed him, but actually fond of his hideous jailor. Brill, however, did not stand alone in India. A couple like Lieutenant and Mrs. Brill were to be found in every station, and, perhaps, in every regiment throughout the service.

When I went to take my leave of Brill and his wife, the latter crossed her legs and folded her arms, and looked at me as savagely as though I had stolen her bag of rupees; and in reply to a question which I put to her, touching her health, she replied,---

“Don’t you think the Governor-general ought to be ashamed of himself?”

“For what?” I asked.

“Why, for giving you a staff appointment,” said Mrs. Brill.

“No,” said I; “I don’t think he ought to be ashamed of himself for that.”

“Oh, don’t you?” said Mrs. Brill. “Then you are as bad as he is, or the person who recommended you. A pretty Governor-general!” she continued, scornfully. “Doesn’t know how to make use of his patterinidge!” This last remark was made a good deal in Mrs. Caudle’s tone---when she rates Caudle for losing his umbrella. “Here’s Brill,” she went on, pointing to her husband, who sat as quiet as a mouse, not daring to interrupt her. “Just look at Brill. There is a man who has made himself fit for the staff. Everybody knows that. He applies to Government for everything that becomes vacant. And what reply does he get from Government? Why, that there are already too many officers absent from the corps; but that his claims shall not be forgotten when the number of officers doing regimental duty will admit of his being withdrawn. Well, a vacancy occurs; Brill applies for it, expects to get it; but you---his junior by ten years---you---who have not passed---you---who have no more idea of figures and accounts than a turkey-cock---you are taken, and Brill is left --- in the lurch!”

“I am very sorry for Brill,” said I; “but you know, Mrs. Brill, in this country---every man for himself is the motto.”

“Man!” ejaculated Mrs. Brill, contemptuously. “Man, indeed! Do you call yourself a man? Why, you are only a mere boy. If it wasn’t for your uniform, no one would know you belonged to the cavalry, for you cannot call that down upon your upper lip a moustache. Man!” she screeched. “You a man! I suppose you are connected with some Director. That makes a man of any trumpery boy, no matter how stupid or dissipated he may be. I suppose your goings-on have got you into debt, and you wrote home for money; and instead of sending you out an order on some house for the amount, they sent you out an order on the Governor-general for a staff appointment, which would answer the purpose, and save their pockets. I know how these things are managed. How came young Grillby to get the adjutancy of that irregular regiment? Why, by living too fast, and getting over head and ears in debt. And how was it that Lucius Jones got into the commissariat department? Why, by going security for another man, and being called upon to pay the money. His father did not like to send it out, so he made the Government pay for his son’s indiscretion; and what’s more, he burthened Government with a man who is such a fool that he allows Government to be robbed of lacs and lacs of rupees every year. Jones’s head-clerk lives in a fine house, beautifully furnished, drives his carriage and pair, and his horse and buggy, keeps riding horses for himself and his wife, and a pony a-piece for his children, and buys shares in all the banks on a salary of seventy-five rupees (7l. 10s.) a month. Under such men as Jones---and there are a good many of ’em in staff-employ--- Government, when it wants elephants and camels,---no, not when it wants ’em, but when the subordinates make out that Government wants ’em---buys its own property!”

There was too much truth in Mrs. Brill’s remarks to render them palatable, and I rose to take my departure. I heard her, after I left the room, wishing the Court of Directors, the Board of Control, the Governor-general, and myself, every species of ill-fortune. Brill came out to see me into my buggy, and begged me, in a whisper, not to be annoyed at anything his wife had said.

“You know, Wetherby,” said Brill, “it is rather a hard case. You must confess it is --- a very hard case, to have a junior taken out of your regiment to fill the very berth you had set your heart upon. It’s quite enough to make a man take to drink. Many fellows do, when they see that all the time they have spent in study has been to no purpose; and that without powerful interest, passing in the languages is all rot, and hoping for employ on the staff next door to madness; and the worst part of the business,” continued poor Brill, “is this ---whenever we meet with one of these disappointmeats, I get rowed as much as if I had had a hand in rejecting my own application. I come in for it as though I had no business to be without the interest which other people happen to have. Don’t you see, Wetherby?”

I did see, and bade poor Brill good-bye.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

When I arrived in Calcutta, Manson invited me to live in his house. I accepted his kind offer, and might have saved every farthing of my staff pay and allowances; but I began to incur debts in all directions. Everybody was delighted to give me credit, and have me on their books. I had made immense progress at billiards, and was considered one of the best players in Calcutta; but I was too free in giving points, and long odds, and contrived to come off a loser at the end of each month. I had also imbibed a strong passion for the turf, and being a very good judge of a horse, I bought five maiden Arabs, which Mrs. Manson named respectively Othello, Iago, Cassia, Roderigo, and Rodovico.

What with training in the morning, billiard-playing and calling during the day, attending Mrs. Manson’s carriage in the evening, and dining out, I had scarcely a moment to spare. I attended “office” occasionally, and abused the chupprassies (messengers), and sometimes kicked them, just to satisfy my conscience that I did not draw my salary for nothing, and that I was not ungrateful for the Company’s salt; but I am not aware that I did the state any essential service.

The cold weather came, and with it the long-looked-for races. Two of my horses, Othello and Lodovico, were entered for the Cup, the great race of the first day. Both horses were the favourites, and both were to start. At the ordinary, I was asked with which horse I intended to win. I replied, “with the best horse, whichever it may be.” Othello, who was by far the finer animal of the two, was bought at a very high price in the lottery, and Lodovico was drawn, unfortunately, by Manson, who refused to put him up to sale. The bets upon the race were something enormous, considering the comparative smallness of the community---not less, perhaps, than 30,000l. were staked on the event. I purposely refrained from making a single bet, insomuch as both favourites were my property; nor was I aware that Manson had betted so heavily as I afterwards discovered he had done.

The field came to the starting-post, and I was not a little proud of my beautiful greys. “Off!” and away they went. I rushed to Mrs. Manson’s side in the stand to witness the struggle, in common with all Calcutta. Othello and Lodovico took the lead, and kept it; they were neck and neck, stride and stride, the whole way round the course, till they came to the distance-post, when Othello fell a little behind. His jockey immediately took to the spur and the whip, and Lodovico’s jockey instantly followed the example. The contest between them became intensely exciting. Those who had backed Othello, frantically called out “Othello! Othello’s race!” Those who had backed Lodovico shouted “Lodovico for ever! Lodovico!” It was soon over. Othello beat Lodovico by a nose.

I went down from the stand to claim the cup, for the purpose of presenting it to Mrs. Manson; but very high words at the scales, where the jockeys were weighed, induced me to go there and ascertain what the noise was all about. Such an uproar I had never before witnessed in the whole course of my life, nor had I ever seen men’s passions so frightfully aroused, and swayed by pecuniary interests. It appeared that Othello’s jockey was about a quarter of an ounce under weight, and Lodovico was adjudged by the stewards to be the winner of the race!

As I was coming away from the scales, with the intention of taking Othello’s jockey to task, I heard a gentleman say to a friend with whom he was conversing, “Oh, the Cornet” (I was always called the Cornet) “knew that Othello’s jockey was not weight when he started. That fellow, Manson, you know, has won about a lac of rupees (10,000l.); and I suppose they will go halves --- the Count and Beppo always were good friends!”

“I could not help hearing your remark,” said I to this gentleman, --- “I mean your remark about this race. Surely you do not mean seriously to impute to me any unfair play in the matter?”

He made me no reply, but smiled contemptuously in my face.

I repeated my last question, with as much calmness as my position would admit of; but no reply was afforded me in words. The contemptuous smile had now grown into a broad and peculiarly aggravating grin.

Having inherited a hot temper and a strong arm, I raised my fist, dealt my enemy a heavy blow on his chest, and laid him senseless at my feet.

The gentleman whom I had thus assaulted, under such gross provocation, belonged to one of the services; he had immense influence with several of the secretaries to Government, and was nearly connected with one of them by marriage. As soon as I had knocked him down, I felt satisfied that my commission was forfeited --- that nothing could save me. I left the race-course in disgust, and went to my rooms in Manson’s house. Thither many of my friends flocked to ascertain my version of the affair, for several very extraordinary versions were already going the round of the society.

That evening I was placed under arrest, and the brigade-major, when he came to demand my sword, cruelly informed me of the general opinion, which was, that I should be “smashed to a moral!” But petticoat influence (what is there that a pretty woman cannot do, in every part of the world?), which got me my appointment, was again strenuously exerted on my behalf. I was released from arrest; but, alas! I was placed, in general orders, at the disposal of his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief. In other words, I had to rejoin my corps.

My bills were now speedily furnished by the various tradespeople with whom I had accounts, and a large sum they amounted to in the aggregate. During the twelve months I had been in Calcutta, I had contracted debts to the extent of 31,000 rupees, (3150Z.) Manson agreed to take my stud over at a valuation of 25,000 rupees, and carried the balance, 650Z., to my debit in the books of the firm, upon which I was authorised to draw, to meet the demands of my creditors.

[The debts of the Indian army, by which is meant, I suppose, the debts of officers in the army of the East India Company, have so frequently formed a topic of discussion in the English newspapers, that a few practical observations, even in this narrative, may not be considered out of place. With all due deference to Sir Charles Napier, and others who think and say to the contrary, I know that neither a Cornet nor an ensign can live on his pay in India, without getting into debt. He may exist, and he may save money (one out of every hundred does, perhaps), but, as for living comfortably, and having those luxuries which in India are absolutely necessaries of life, it is out of the question. I do not mean to say that race-horses and champagne are necessaries of life. I am speaking of the mass, who never dream of indulging in these matters---men who do all in their power to avoid debt and its concomitant difficulties. Having once exceeded his means, the young officer becomes dun-hardened,---becomes accustomed to receiving letters, calling upon him for payment. They gradually lose their effect, and, instead of making him anxious to rub off old scores, they sharpen his appetite for establishing new ones. Hopelessly inextricable, he becomes reckless, and orders supplies (principally they consist of brandy, wine, beer, and cigars), wherever he can get them on credit. He has frequently an execution-general out against him, an award from the Court of Requests, authorising the sale of his pro

perty. This does not affect him much. The property which A sells by auction, in pursuance of the executiongeneral, was bought last month, from B and C, on credit. A loses the young officer's custom, and some one else (D) gets it, and B and C soon bring him into the Court of Requests, and get a decree, by which they sell off the effects purchased from D. Nothing would be easier than to remedy this. Let the Courts of Request be abolished altogether, except in cases between master and servant, for the settlement of disputes concerning wages. Let the tradesman, who is too prone to encourage the young officer to be extravagant in his orders, be left without any remedy for the recovery of his demands, and he will then be careful how he parts with his goods without the cash. It is to settle these tradesmen's bills that young officers are often driven into the banks, to borrow a good round sum, which they engage to pay off in a certain time, by monthly instalments from their pay, which is not, in the first instance, sufficient for their support! When an officer attains the rank of captain, it takes him years and years, in most cases, to free himself from the liabilities contracted in earlier and more imprudent days. I have known the best-intentioned and steadiest lads get slightly into debt on joining, and, before two years had passed, they have been so deeply in the mire, they knew not which way to turn, or how to contrive for a mere subsistence, without giving orders for goods which they were aware they could never pay for, and in these desperate circumstances they frequently take it into

their heads to marry any penniless girl who oan be persuaded to accept them.]

It would be impossible to depict the disgust with which I once more

entered upon regimental duties. As for living on my pay, and keeping

down the interest on the debt to Manson's firm, that was out of the

question---utterly hopeless: and during the then present administration

I was satisfied there was no chance of my being restored to staff-employ

nevertheless, I lived as quietly as I possibly could, hired a Moonshee (a teacher), and took to studying Persian and Hindee. But I soon grew weary of this, and joined in all the dissipation which was then unfortunately so common, not only in my own corps, but in almost every regiment in the service. Funerals became so frequent, that Death lost its terrors amongst the survivors. Many fell victims to disease and the climate; but more than two-thirds were carried off by hard drinking. The day was turned into night, and the night into day. Most of us used to go from the billiard-room to the parade- ground, and from the parade-ground to our beds. I had " immense luck " (so it was spoken of) in the shape of promotion. Four men who were above me when I rejoined my regiment had drunk themselves out, and I got my lieutenancy before I had been three years a cornet. Our regiment was bidding fair to rival a regiment of native infantry, which could boast of captains only twenty-five or twenty-six years of age!

At last my health began to give way; but brandy- and-water and cheroots were the only medicines I could

be prevailed upon to take. This ended in a fit of delirium tremens, and I was looked upon by the cornets as " a certain step." One of them used, jocularly, to measure me, as I lay on my bed, and remark what an awful long " box " I should require. But the friends of my father and my mother were determined that I should not die for want of care. Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Green, and another lady, watched me by turns, and tended me through a long and tedious illness (during which I used to rave about Sophy), with maternal kindness and patience.

In time, I recovered from my fever and bodily pains; but my intellect had suffered severely, and I was childish and imbecile, and frequently did not know my most intimate acquaintances who came to visit me. The doctor of the regiment recommended that I should be sent home on sick certificate for a couple of years. The means were advanced by my brother-officers, and bills drawn upon my father to cover them. I was sent down the country, as helpless as an infant, in the custody of an European servant, who had instructions never to lose sight of me until the ship, in which my passage had been taken, was about to sail. Mrs. Manson, I was told, took great care of me while I was at Calcutta, previous to my embarkation; but of this I had no recollection. It was not until we had arrived at St. Helena, and I went on shore, with a large party, to visit Napoleon's tomb, that my faculties were completely restored to me. I there began to feel that a long link in my existence was wanting. The last of myself --- that is, of my former self---that I could remember with distinctness, was dining at the mess of a dragoon regiment on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. How ashamed did I feel of myself! With what remorse did I look back upon the past! I borrowed an Army List from one of the passengers, and there found the names of two lieutenants of my regiment senior to myself scratched out. I had no idea that they were dead. I knew that they must have died of hard drinking; and that brandy was at the bottom of this additional promotion. I interrogated one or two officers on board, as to my conduct on the passage, and, to my great joy, was informed that I had scarcely spoken a word since we left Calcutta, and had been guilty of nothing extravagant in my manners. My dressing-case and my desk, containing my letters, papers, and sufficient money to defray my current expenses, were (they said) deposited with the captain, who was requested to restore them to me when he conceived I was in a fit state to receive them. Oh 1 the sense of humility I experienced---it stung me to the very soul --- when I went into the captain's cabin to demand these things --- to stand before him, and acknowledge that I had been insane! On opening my desk I found all my private letters in a packet, sealed with the seal of Colonel Baxter. He was a very curious person, and I doubted not he had read them, and made himself acquainted with a great deal more than I wished him to know, for he was an inveterate old gossip. There were Mrs. Manson's letters, and amongst them one in which she explained how she had managed to obtain for me the staff appointment. And there, too, were letters from Sophy and her father, Mr. Revelle.

We were approaching the coast of England, and I was now perplexed to the last degree. I was certain that I should be received with kindness by my father and'mother---especially when they saw me such a wreck as I then was; --- a very young man--- old-looking ---shattered in constitution --- shrivelled in face---infirm of limb --- and timid, lest my senses should again desert me. But then the cause of our former differences was not removed; and it would be sure to lead to a further breach between us. My love for Sophy Revelle was not one whit diminished. On the contrary, I held her more dear than the whole of my relatives put together.

We reached Gravesend, and I was in my cabin, seated on a chest, asking myself, --- how could I possibly pass Mr. Revelle's house without going in to embrace Sophy? when I heard a tapping at the door.

"Come in," said I, mechanically.

Who should make his appearance but my father!

"Well, Robert," said he, extending his hand, "so you have been going it rather hard, I hear---and pretty seedy you are looking after it; but you have been precious lucky in your promotion, by Jove! I was seven years before I got to the top of the Cornets, and there I stuck for eighteen months waiting for a lieutenant to go off---whereas you have four lieutenants under you already. I never heard of such luck! And coming home sick, too; that ought to be worth a couple or three steps more, for when a rattling mortality once gets into a regiment they go out. in very quick succession. By the time you return, you will stand well on for your

F troop; for while you are recruiting your health at home they will be making way for you with casualties."

I was shocked to hear my father talk in this strain --- I had been so very near "a casualty" myself. But then he had been so accustomed to think after this fashion --- and, indeed, I had heard so many talk in the same way, that I was not much surprised. My father appeared to put my broken-down constitution and shattered frame into one scale, and my rank and standing in the regiment into the other; and after duly balancing both seemed perfectly satisfied with the result.

"Baxter," said be, "has drawn bills upon me for your passage-money, but never mind that just now; we will talk of business by-and-bye. Your mother is on shore at Gravesend --- so come along."

I know not whether it be the climate of India, but there is something connected with a stay in the East which not only cools our friendships, but estranges us from those who are even most nearly allied to us by blood. There was a time when I would have ran, half dressed, to meet my mother, after an absence of or.ly a few weeks. Yea, when I left Oxford I would have done this: but now, after an absence of nearly five years in India, I could not think of going on shore until I had attired myself in a becoming dress, had given a variety of directions about passing my luggage; stayed to bid the captain, the officers, and several fellow-passengers " farewelland pay the cabin servants sundry gratuities for their attentions to me on the passage.

When we reached the hotel, my father led me to the room wherein my mother was sitting, anxiously waiting for my coming. I approached her affectionately; but she did not seem to know me. When I spoke she exclaimed, "Good heavens! Robert? Are you my son, my blooming boy, that went out to India? Are you my boy?" and she burst into tears. My mother was prepared to see a sick man, with a pale face and sunken eyes; but she never dreamt of encountering me with that peculiar battered look which a severe course of extremely hard living in the East invariably imparts to those who indulge therein. It is a look which years of abstinence will not remove. Ay, it sometimes remains for ever with those who once get it.

My mother could not keep her eyes off me, and once or twice I observed her shudder. Before I had been in her company an hour, she made two or three remarks which were not very complimentary and somewhat unkind. She declared that I looked older than my father, and that I reminded her of Hillson. Hillson was a very debauched captain in my regiment, who had a purple nose and watery eyes.

The ladies of the corps had represented me in their letters as the victim of fever, and my mother had, of course, believed that it was from fever I had suffered. But as soon as she saw me she knew that I had been a hard drinker, and that my illness was a consequence of brandy-and-water, cheroots, and late hours. My mother detested people who were intemperate, and the idea that I had been so cooled her affection for me. She even went so far, before she retired to bed, as to say that the death of poor Williams, the cornet who got his promotion when my father did, hy Brevet-Colonel Jones's death, must have been a great relief to his family, seeing that he was always " boozing " and tormenting them to send him money.

My father and myself being left alone, I took out my cheroot-case and offered him a Manilla. He thanked me, but declined.

"I used once to take a cheroot occasionally," said he (as though I had forgotten the time when he was never without a cheroot in his mouth, from morning till night); " but I never smoke now by any chance. I am happy to say the vile habit is almost entirely exploded in this country." Nevertheless, I lighted a cheroot and called for a glass of brandy-and-water. I felt already that there was not the slightest chance of my agreeing with my family.

"How does old Baxter go on in the regiment?" asked my father, after a long pause in the conversation.

"Much as usual," I replied; "he is very popular amongst us --- he is so kind and considerate."

"Yes, he is a good old fellow," said my father, "but a shocking vulgar old dog. And old Green? How was he?"

"He was very well," said I. " Everybody likes the Major, he is such an honest creature."

"Honest enough," said my father, "but a dreadfully prosy old fool." (There was scarcely an officer in the corps that he did not disparage in some way or other.) " And what did they say about me? Didn't they often talk about me?"

I was determined to pay him off for abusing people

who, out of mistaken kindness, had not suffered me to die, as many of my companions had done. "They didn't often talk of you," said I; " but now and then they took occasion to do so."

"And what used they to say?" he demanded.

"Why, they used to say," said I, "whenever I told them anything extraordinary, that in time I should rival you.'

"W'ho said that?" he asked, very angrily.

"All of them," said I.

"Then you ought to have knocked all of them down," said my father, clenching his fist.

"It is not so easy to knock a whole regiment down," said I.

"But you might have tried," said my father.

"Then I should have been tried myself, and cashiered," said I.

"Never mind," said my father, "I should have thought the better of you."

"I had enough of knocking people down," said I;

"I lost a good appointment by it."

"Ah! by-the-bye," said my father, "how^T^ did you manage to get that capital appointment which you had not the sense to keep? Some old friend of mine, I warrant, took a fancy to you."

"Indeed not," said I; " a lady---a particular friend of mine --- interested herself on my behalf."

"A lady? married woman?"

"Yes."

"Good-looking?"

"Very."

"Much at Government House?"

"Constantly."

"Such influence is always attended by bad luck in the end," said my father. "I am not surprised you didn't hold your appointment long. When I first went to India, I might have got staff-employ by precisely the same means; but I did not like the idea of my fortunes being purchased by the smiles of a woman, from a Governor-general who had never taken the slightest notice of me, and didn't know or care who I was, or what regiment I belonged to. If I had been in the country, I should not have failed to show up such a case as yours in its proper light, although you were my own son."

"Scores of people showed it up," said I. " There were letters in the papers without end. But what good did they do? Those people who had the credit of writing them had a black cross put opposite their names; and, as you are aware, none with that need ever apply for any appointment that becomes vacant. Old Colonel Baxter told me one day that you had done yourself a great deal of harm by exposing jobbery."

Shortly after this my father retired, and I followed his example.

The next day we set off for Upwood. My brother, who was on the point of taking his degree at Oxford, met us in London; and the whole of the inside of the coach was taken for our accommodation. My brother scarcely recollected me (I must have been dreadfully altered in personal appearance), and his manners were, I fancied, cool, distant, and reserved. My father and mother seemed to regard him as a perfect prodigy, and

to consult him upon all occasions. Nothing could be done, or left undone, without hearing what Charles had to say upon the subject. This, and the patronising air which Charles exhibited towards me, were rather painful, even on the road; but, when we got into the house, it was positively offensive. Charles ordered " this gentleman's things " (meaning my luggage) to be taken here and there as though I was some college friend who had come to visit him at Upwood. I could scarcely express an opinion without Charles dissenting therefrom; and he was always in a majority, for he was invariably supported by both my father and mother.

We were all very tired after our journey, and at nine o'clock prayers were said (by Charles, of course), and the bed-candles brought in (by Charles's command) immediately afterwards.

"I shall go outside, and walk about, and smoke a cheroot before I go to bed," said I. " There are no savage dogs on the premises, are there?"

"Oh, dear no," said Charles from the landing.

The reader will not be surprised to hear that I walked straight to Mr. Revelle's house, as fast as I possibly could. I had written to Sophy from the Downs, informing her of my arrival, and assuring her that severe illness had been the sole cause of my long silence previous to leaving India. Revelle guessed that the loud knock at the door was mine: they had been expecting me all day. He rushed out, and welcomed me cordially. "You will find Sophy in the dining-room," said he, after a few moments' conversation. He did not follow me, for he was a person of great consideration.

Dear Sophy! she rushed to my arms, and we were again happy.

Sophy either could not, or would not, see any change in my appearance, though Revelle, who soon came into the room (after calling in the passage for one of the servants, just to warn us of his approach), was obliged to confess that I looked as though I had seen a good deal of service of some kind or other. Logs were heaped upon the fire, and Revelle proposed punch, to which I had not the slightest objection, especially as Sophy w^T^as to make the brew. And Revelle further proposed a pipe, declaring that Sophy rather liked the smell of tobacco, whereupon I instantly offered my father-in- law elect a choice Manilla. Oh, how I enjoyed the warm hospitality of that house compared with the coldness and fault-finding I had met with in my own home! My return was not like that of the prodigal son of old. There was no killing of a fatted calf for me.

Sophy had grown even more beautiful and more graceful, and rather taller. She was now in her twenty- second year. . When I gazed at her, I wondered how I could ever have forgotten her, even for an instant, to think of Ellen Fletcher. Revelle made excuses for leaving the room several times, in order that we might be alone for a brief while; always taking care, however, to have a fit of coughing, or to find a dog in his way, or do something to let us know when he was coming into

sophy's punch.

73

the room. The punch was excellent, and Revelle and myself took a goodly quantity, and smoked at least half- a-dozen cheroots each.

It grew' late, past one in the morning, and Sophy reluctantly hade me good night. I followed her into the passage on pretence of giving her a mitten which she had left behind, and there we hade each other " good night " again, two or three times. When I returned to the fireside, Revelle said to me, "Let's have some more punch, and another weed, and then we will talk business. You had better sleep here to-night. I have had a shakedown made ready for you in my dressingroom."

"A thousand thanks," said I, "and that will bring matters to a crisis."

"How do you mean?" said Revelle.

"Why, you know perfectly well," replied I, "that my people will set upon me the moment I go home --- father, mother, and pragmatical brother, and then "

"Here's a home for you to fall back upon," said Revelle, giving me his hand. "Your father thinks I. laid a trap to catch you for Sophy," continued Revelle, "but he is very much mistaken. I like you exceedingly, and so does my daughter, and you shall be married; that I am determined. This place is settled upon her, and that place over the way is settled upon you; so that the lawyer part of the business will be very soon done. Both properties shall be secured to your issue, if there be any. Meanwhile, you must do the best you can. You have your pay, and as for the expenses of the marriage, I wall defray them; in short,

I'll give you a thousand pounds, for I don't think you can expect anything from your father."

"Not-a shilling," said I; " and I'm afraid he will not accept some hills drawn by the officers of my regiment for 200Z., to defray my passage to England, and the expenses incurred upon my journey down the country. But 1000Z. would be more than we should require." Alas! I had really forgotten all about my debt to Manson's firm, and when Mr. Revelle asked me if I had any other liabilities, I answered, "No."

My father did not wait for my going home. Next morning, while we were at breakfast, several leather trunks passed the window. Revelle, on beholding them, said, "Hulloa! what have we here?" I looked out of the window, and instantly recognised my luggage: but I said nothing. Presently a note was brought in, and delivered to me. With Sophy's permission I opened it, and read as follows:---

"Dear Robert,---In obedience to my father's commands I have the pleasure to send you your luggage. My father and mother both think you may be inconvenienced without it, as they do not expect you to return to Upwood.

"Your affectionate brother,

Charles Wetherby.

"To Lieut. Wetherby,

12th Light Cavalry."

"Well, that is cool, certainly," said Revelle, "but never mind, we will make room for you."

I was delighted, and so was Sophy.

Revelle was bent on annoying my father, and he therefore employed an attorney who was a great tattler to draw up the settlements; and this attorney told everybody what was going to be done, and wrote to my father, inquiring if he had ever " settled his remainder of the property of Upwood, by way of jointure, and if so, in and by virtue of what clause?" The fact was, the attorney entered into Revelle's spite, and affected to think that the intended marriage was with my father's concurrence. My father, who in his passion had completely lost his wits, signified his intention of replying to the attorney's letter by sending a friend to call him out; but my brother Charles wisely dissuaded him from having recourse to a measure at once so unseemly and. undignified.

Sophy and myself were married in the Church at Upwood, within one month after the day of my arrival in England. Mr. Revelle was only too glad to see his daughter settled in life. He was a man who liked moving about, and while Sophy was unmarried he was tied to his home. Very fond of Sophy, he had made many sacrifices for her; but it was an immense relief to Mr. Revelle to feel that she had now another protector, and that he might go wherever he pleased, and enjoy himself. After our wedding tour in Wales, we prepared for our departure to India. I had only been in England nine months, and my health being completely restored, the remainder of my leave I caused to be cancelled.

I wrote to my father and my mother before we embarked, but neither of them took any notice of my letters.

Chapter III.

The Overland route to India I

If your destinies should ever be cast in the East, reader, avoid the tedious passage round the Cape, and patronise the Peninsular and Oriental Company. Believe not the complaints of a few unreasonable grumblers; but take the word of one who has witnessed the liberal treatment experienced by passengers on board those magnificent vessels, the Bentinck and Hindoostan. And if your time will admit of it, take a passage only as far as Alexandria. There you may spend a fortnight very pleasantly; then go on to Cairo, where you should halt again for another fortnight, previous to crossing the Desert for Suez.

Sophy had never travelled, and she was as much enchanted with the journey as I was myself. We had saved about 150Z. out of the handsome donation of Mr. Revelle, and the greater part of this we rather imprudently squandered in purchasing a variety of articles which were not only useless, but troublesome to carry about.

At Malta, we bought a small dog in a cage for five guineas; and we further encumbered ourselves with

CANARIES, MRS. MANSON, ETC. 77

several canaries. The trouble I had with these pets in the van crossing the Desert it would be impossible to describe.

At Alexandria we bought burnouses, and all kinds of Turkish and Barbary ornaments.

At Ceylon, we took in cats-eyes, garnets, rubies, and diamonds, the greater part of which we afterwards discovered had been manufactured at Birmingham.

At Madras, we laid in a stock of muslins, and by the time we got to Calcutta our means were completely exhausted.

At Diamond Harbour I received a very kind letter from Mrs. Manson. She congratulated me on my marriage, and offered us rooms in her house, and intimated that on landing we should find her carriage at the glial (wharf), and her servants ready to assist in removing our luggage. I had never mentioned Mrs. Manson's name to my wife, and when I saw the well-known handwriting I trembled, blushed, and hesitated to break the seal.

"What is that, Robert?" inquired Mrs. Wetherby.

"A letter, my dear," said I, "from a lady whose husband is an old friend of mine. She is one of the best-natured creatures in the world, and has invited us to stay with them."

"Oh, how kind of her!" exclaimed my wife.

"Very," said I, wishing that I could make a clean breast of it, and tell her that Mrs. Manson and myself had onpe had a flirtation.

I knew how I should be greeted by Mrs. Mauson, and felt convinced that my wife, who had never witnessed Eastern warmth of manners, would be a good

deal startled wheu she heard a pretty, and far from elderly lady, address me in terms of affectionate, though innocent, endearment. I was by no means satisfied that Mrs. Wetherby would like this, for she was decidedly of a jealous temperament, and constantly had an eye upon me. How nervous I felt, and how incoherent must have been my discourse, wheu I beheld Mrs. Manson seated in her carriage, waving her kerchief, as the boat in which we were landing neared the shore. I remember that I repeated at least a dozen times, "My dear Sophy, her husband is a very old friend of mine; she has been like a sister to me, and when I was ill she watched me as tenderly as though I had been her own son." "Hang it!" thought I, "if she were only a little older, and less pretty, and less excitable."

Just as I expected! Mrs. Manson, instead of remaining in the camage, sprang out, seized me by both hands, and, overjoyed to see me looking so strong and healthy, danced about more like a child than a grown woman; and then seizing my wife, whom she called her " darling," she complimented me on my taste with all that volubility of which she was so capable.

"You always had good taste, my dear Robert," she exclaimed, with a ringing laugh. "Always. Hadn't you?"

My wife seemed pleased with the reception she received from Mrs. Manson ; but her looks betrayed that she did not exactly comprehend the lady's excitement.

"You have heard of the smash?" said Mrs. Manson to me, with a smile and a sigh.

"No; what smash?" I inquired.

"The firm---our firm, my dear," she replied.

"NonsenseI" I exclaimed, quite horrified.

"Fact!" she cried, waving her kerchief. "Manson is at Serampore. It will he all over next week, and then he'll be a pucka (ripe) bankrupt, and start fresh again."

My wife thought Mrs. Manson was mad or heartless. "Her husband a bankrupt, poor man! a fugitive, and she riding in that magnificent carriage, drawn by two beautiful Arabs, and dressed in a style which was truly queen-like?"

"I was obliged to leave that house in Chouringhee," said Mrs. Manson, " but I have taken another in Elysium Row, which I like better. The reception - rooms are larger, and we get more of the breeze from the south. By the way, the sale of our old things comes off in a day or two, and you must attend and buy for me several of the pictures and a pet dinner-service. I do so like to make you useful, Cornet dear."

The smash did not affect Mrs. Manson much. She had her marriage settlement to fall back upon, and a very handsome settlement it was.

"How*did it happen?" I inquired.

"What! the smash? Well, I did hear, but I have forgotten," said Mrs. Manson, "Opium, tea, or indigo, or something of that sort. I hate business, and never meddle with it, you know."

We arrived at Mrs. Manson's house, and were conducted to our apartments. Mrs. Wetherby was dazzled by the splendour by which she was surrounded; and no wonder, for she had never beheld anything of the kind before. She had been under the impression that her finery would create some sensation in Calcutta, but she was soon disabused of this idea when she saw Mrs. Manson appear at dinner. Such diamonds and rubies J such a rich silk dress, and such lace trimming!

There was a small party of eight or ten people, to meet us. Several were the wives of other members of the firm. They, too, did not appear to feel the " smash." Mrs. Manson invariably spoke of the failure in that forcible word.

When we retired, my wife said to me, "Robert, how is it that you never mentioned these Mansons to me?"

"I have often mentioned them," said I.

"Never 1" said my wife. "You have spoken of Mrs. Baxter, and Mrs. Green, and several other ladies, but never of Mrs. Manson."

"Didn't I?" said I.

"No, Robert," said my wife; "and I am not pleased with her manners. She is much too familiar. The idea of her pulling you by the whisker!"

"It is the way of the country," said I; " you must not think anything of that, my dear."

"And to see her filling your glass with champagne, and then filling her own, and winking at you when she drank; and then to see you grin. Oh, I was shocked, Robert!"

This conversation brought about a difference which grew into a quarrel. It was our first; and I began to think that married life in India was rather a mistake.

The next day I received a letter from a hard-hearted attorney, who informed me that he was " instructed by the assignees of the estate of the late firm of Border- daile, Manson, and Briggs, to apply to me for payment of the sum of 8560 rupees (8567.), which stood to my debit in the books of the late firm, for principal borrowed, and interest due thereon up to date." I was stunned on beholding this communication---coming, as it did, upon me, to aggravate seemingly my wife's ridiculous fastidiousness. How was I to raise the money? And, having raised it, how was I to keep down interest at twelve per cent, and keep up the establishment of a married man on 367. 10s. 6d. per mensem---a lieutenant's pay? It was enough, I thought, to make me cut my throat or shoot myself. 5007. a-year, at which my income had been " lumped " in England, appeared a noble sum; but I now felt the stem reality of difficulties, and knew not where to turn for advice or assistance. I convicted myself of selfishness, if not of deceit, in allowing Mr. Revelle to think I was better off than I really was. What a fool had I been when a youth! This huge incubus of debt I had incurred was the result of sheer folly and childish vanity. To think that my wife's comforts would have to be abridged for years in consequence of my former extravagance --- the thought maddened me! That night, however, I laid it all bare to my wife, and it made my heart bleed to find her treat the matter so lightly; but it pleased me to hear her say she would endure any amount of privation rather than that I should apply to her father for assistance, for I fully appreciated the delicacy of her motives.

G

A man in the Cavalry requires chargers, on joining his corps, and to purchase these my wife proposed selling the dog, and the canaries, and other things, of no use to us, which we had picked up on the journey to India. Mrs. Manson bought most of these small effects at auction, and at prices far exceeding their real value. My wife was gradually reconciled to that lady, but she appeared extremely glad when we took our departure for the Upper Provinces. The debt to the late firm of Borderdaile, Manson, and Briggs, was allowed to stand over until I could make some arrangement for its early settlement.

The readiness with which one officer in the Indian army becomes security for his brother-officer is notorious. Every man in my corps, including even poor Brill, was content to make himself responsible for the amount I required from the Agra Bank, payable in three years by monthly instalments; but I paid old Colonel Baxter and Major Green the compliment to select them. Their seniority and standing demanded it, I thought.

My wife was evidently disappointed with India, but she struggled hard to conceal her feelings. She was seemingly more sorry that I had allowed her to deceive herself than at finding we were in narrow instead of affluent circumstances.

I have stated that my pay was 36Z. 10s. (id. per mensem. Out of this take 20Z. a-month, by way of an instalment, 51. a-month for rent. This left us only 111. 10s. fid. a-month for living, servants, dress, and the keep of a horse for an old buggy which we bought for taking our drive every evening.

Sophy was a great favourite with the regiment, and the younger officers were constantly dropping in to tea, which meant brandy-and-water and cheroots. Oh! the difficulty that we had to make both ends meet; but somehow or other we contrived to do so.

One night---it was in the cold month of December--- Sophy and myself were sitting over the fire, discussing that constant theme, the state of our affairs, when an officer of my regiment, a young cornet, named Walsing- ham, broke in upon us, sword in hand. Walsingham had been, and was then, suffering from a fit of del. trem. (delirium tremens). His head was shaved, and he was dressed in only a shirt and a pair of regulation (full- dress) trousers, and he had only one boot on.

"I say, Wetherby," said he, "I have at last fleshed my maiden sword." And he held up the blade, which was covered with blood. "There were five of them, but I have only killed one --- the rest ran away. They were all Seiks---pucka Seiks---Wetherby!"

I motioned my w'ife to leave the room; but she was too much alarmed for my safety to admit of her being obedient.

"Don't you hear them, Wetherby?" said Walsingham. "They are surrounding the house. Arm! arm! They will be down upon us in another moment!"

My servants had fled in all directions. Not a soul answered to my call. "Go---bring me my sword," I said to my -wife. "Don't you hear the Seiks are down upon us? Quick! There is not a moment to be lost." But my wife would not leave me.

"Halloa, Walsingham!" cried I, "in killing your

Seik you have broken the point of your sword. See here I"

I took the weapon from his hand, and then ordered my wife to leave the room. This order she obeyed, and summoned the servants, who, when they knew that Walsingham was disarmed, were ready enough to render assistance.

After great difficulty I calmed our visitor. Scarcely had I succeeded when my bungalow was besieged by several officers in quest of him. Walsingham had awakened from a short sleep, which had been induced by opiates; had found a brandy bottle, and then armed himself. He had cut down his bearer, or personal attendant, and had slightly wounded a syce (groom). He was so violent that we were compelled to strap him down to a bed in my dressing-room, and then it required all the strength of myself and three other officers to hold him. During the whole night he continued to rave violently, and at dawn of day he suddenly expired.

That afternoon, at four o'clock, we saw Walsingham placed beneath the turf, or rather the ^andy soil of the churchyard of Umballah, which was then a frontier station. He was a fine, handsome, promising youth, of about twenty-two years of age; and he was clever, and of a good disposition. A few days afterwards his shirts, and socks, his uniform, and razors---all that he possessed---were put up to sale by public auction, and were bought by those officers who stood in need of such things, at " a figure considerably below that of prime cost." A speculative clergyman, who was never ashamed of turning an honest penny by quiet trade, had " a lot

of odds and ends (thus the quarter-master seijeant described them), including a nail-brush, half a pot of pomatum, a broken corkscrew, and some blackingbrushes," knocked down to him for one rupee, four annas (2s. 6d. sterling). A copy of Ovid, which Wal- singham had gained as a prize at school, was sold for two annas (3d.); and I bought a sketch in pencil of his mother and sisters, for a shilling, which my wife kept in memory of the poor lad, for whom she had a very great liking before he became so outrageously dissipated.

Mrs. Brill told Sophy that I, "Robert Wetherby, had been just as bad as Mr. Walsingham wasand much as I despised Mrs. Brill for wounding my wife's feelings, still I was not in a condition to deny the truth of her statement.

After Walsingham's death, I endeavoured to reform my young brother-officers; but to no purpose. Somehow or other my lectures generally ended in my taking a glass of brandy-and-water myself, lighting a cheroot, and going home from the mess billiard-room with what Sophy used to speak of as " Oh! such a breath 1 "

Sophy was now an experienced housekeeper, and competent, she imagined, to check the frauds for which all Indian servants are notorious. By the strictest economy we contrived to live, and pay our instalments regularly to the bank. I might have made a hundred rupees (10Z.) a month by my cue; but I had promised Sophy never to play for money, and I felt a pride in abstaining from a game in which I was so certain of success, if I could make up my mind to prey upon youngsters.

I had studied the languages, could now read and write Persian and Hindee, and had applied for several staff appointments; but my luck was not a whit better than that of poor Brill, whose applications for employ still continued to reach head-quarters simultaneously with the mail which conveyed the intelligence of some last incumbents death; for Mrs. Brill had impressed upon him the propriety of always being " first in the field." Manson had founded a new firm, and was even more prosperous than formerly. His wife was still a prodigious favourite with the staff of his Lordship the Governor-general; and she had more than once, by letter (which somehow or other Sophy always got hold of first, and opened), asked me to allow her to do something for me; but my independent partner was so much averse to being under any obligation to a woman, that I declined, and begged Mrs. Manson not to urge my claims.

In the month of January, there were races at our station. I had a charger of great strength and speed; and I said to my wife, one night, "Here is an opportunity, Sophy, which I ought not to lose. My horse Clarion would be certain of winning the Charger Stakes, and they would be worth 50Z., which would go a long way towards paying off three monthly instalments to the bank. I would ride the horse myself. What say you, Sophy?"

My wife was opposed to my running a horse, though

the promise I held, out was peculiarly tempting. Fifty pounds would have been, indeed, a great help; for we were expecting shortly to have to provide for the advent of a small addition to our family.

"Are you sure you would win?" she inquired.

"Quite sure," said I. " I would bet "

"No, don't bet," interrupted my wife.

"Well, I won't bet," said I; " but I am perfectly satisfied I should win; and not only win the stakes, but, by winning, double the value of the horse, and I would then sell him at once. Don't you see, Sophy?"

She did not see so vividly as I wished; but, after several pros and cons, she consented to my entering Clarion---on the express condition that I did not make any bets.

"Don't hamper me with that condition," said I. " Give me my own way, and I'll clear off all my debt by this meeting---that one race."

The spirit of gambling, which had been long dormant, was rapidly rising in my breast; but ■ my wife was firm, and made me pledge my solemn word and honour that I would run my horse for nothing but the public money.

The day arrived, and all the station turned out to witness the sport. A band belonging to one of her Majesty's regiments of foot was in attendance, and every soul on the ground wore a joyous and speculative countenance. My wife had cut up an old pink satin dress to make me a jacket, and had lined my black velvet cap with her own hands. While I was shortening my stirrups, previous to mounting, I heard long odds freely given on Clarion, and taken; and in my heart I was vexed with myself for having yielded to Mrs. Wetherby's entreaties, and for having promised not to have a private venture on the result. To tell the truth, I had a great mind to break my word, and cry out " Five to three 1" in all directions.

I was winning the race easily, when suddenly Clarion fell, as though he had been shot. He broke his leg, and dislocated my shoulder! It was, indeed, "a very pretty business!" Apart from my own personal injury, I was a loser of 120Z. --- the value of my steed, whose throat was cut, to put him out of pain. But this (alas!) was not the worst of the affair. On such occasions, almost every one who has a bet on the race---and very frequently persons who know nothing of the matter--- must needs offer an opinion that it was owing to " bad judgment" that the accident happened.

A young man, named Holdrich, who held a commission in the Company's artillery, had the misfortune to lose a small sum by backing my horse, and he was loud in his denunciation of my riding. If I had " 'eld the 'orse 'ard," he said (as though I was not holding as hard as I could a horse who was running away with me), Clarion would never have fallen. A friend of mine (one Lieutenant Smith), who overheard this vulgar youth, was foolish enough to take him to task, and intemperate enough to twit him with being the son of a haberdasher, to whom a member of the Court of Directors owed a very large bill, which he liquidated by giving away a moiety of patronage.

"What's that you say?" said Holdrich.

"That you are a snob," said Smith.

"Am I?" asked Holdrich. "What, really?" and he squinted at Smith.

[Oh! that young men of hot blood, who hold commissions in the army, and who ought to remember that every person who wears an uniform is, in the eye of the articles of war, "an officer and a gentleman," should ever allow their fists to spoil the faces of their fellowcreatures amongst whom they are thrown! Why cannot they, when they find a person unfit for the position to which fate or corruption has exalted him, do as older hands do? Why cannot they bide their time, and watch an opportunity for " smashing" their victims by the legitimate process of a general court-martial?]

Smith struck Holdrich, and was forthwith placed--- as the reader will remember I once was for a similar act of rashness, committed upon a public race-course --- under an arrest!

That I could have transferred to poor Smith the interest of Mrs. Manson! Unfortunately, Smith had no interest whatsoever; and a general court-martial was speedily ordered to assemble for his trial.

Lieutenant Frederick Gillespie Smith, of the 12th Regiment of Bengal Light Cavalry, was charged with conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, in having, at Umballah, on the day

of , 18---, struck, with his clenched fist, Mr.

Robert Augustus Holdrich, of the Regiment of Artillery.

The court was opened, the members duly sworn, and the trial began. The President, Colonel Jasper, was an old gentleman who had been the greater part of his life in staff-employ; but, when promoted to a majority, he was compelled to join his regiment, of which he obtained the command. Of military law the Colonel was as ignorant as he was of military manoeuvres; he had never before been on a court-martial, and now he was called upon to preside over one. There sat old Colonel Jasper, holding in his trembling hand a magnifying glass, and looking far more frightened and embarrassed than did the prisoner, Smith.

There could be no doubt as to Smith's guilt; but he pleaded " not guilty," that he might be enabled to elicit evidence which he fancied would be of service to him in his defence. To effect this he proceeded to cross-examine Mr. Robert Augustus Holdrich. But there happened to be on the court-martial one of those persons who are a curse to such tribunals---an officer who had read a great deal of military law without understanding its principles, or the true meaning of the words committed to memory. Such persons watch eagerly for an opportunity of displaying their loquacity, which they mistake for learning; and, therefore, when Smith said to Lieutenant Holdrich, "Were you not talking in a very loud voice when I first addressed you?" Captain Dell (such was the name of "the well-read man") cried, "Hold! is not that a leading question?" Then looking towards the President, he said, "Sir, it is clearly laid down in Hough, and in Kennedy, and in Simmonds, that leading questions are inadmissible.

Yes; here it is: " and he handed across the table a bulky volume, having previously marked the identical passage with his thumb-nail.

The President, amidst a profound silence, during which Captain Dell looked in triumph round the court for applause, placed his magnifying glass close to the page and read to himself, but with an open mouth, the "authority" which Captain Dell had quoted in support of his objection. The President then wiped his magnifying glass with a yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, looked vacantly at the Deputy Judge-advocate-general, and said,---

"Sure enough, such is laid down."

The Deputy Judge-advocate-general, however, saw no objection to the question put by Smith.

"What! in the face of that book?" said Captain Dell. "Do you mean to say you may put a leading question?"•

"In the first place," said the Deputy Judge-advocate-general, "I do not admit "

"Oh, if you are going to argue the point," cried Captain Dell, "well clear the court, please 1"

The President nodded assent to Captain Dell, who had caught and taken advantage of the old Colonel's weak eye; and " Clear the court!" resounded through the mess-room in which these memorable proceedings were held.

The debate inside was a very stormy one. While we walked up and down the verandah we could hear Captain Dell's voice above everybody's else. They were all talking together. The duly listener, seem-

"

ingly, was the bewildered President, poor old Colonel Jasper.

"It seems rather hard, Wetherby," said Smith to me, "that I should be debarred from hearing the argument, seeing that I am most deeply interested in it. Why should I not hear all that goes on?" And I was disposed to agree with him---that it was unfair to exclude him.

"The court's open!" was called out, after an hour's delay; and some thirty of us, spectators, returned to the mess-room.

The prisoner was informed that the question was not admissible. Captain Dell had a majority of the members with him. There were about eight out of the thirteen who pinned their faith on Captain Dell's great reading. They regarded him as infallible on all points of military law.

Smith then submitted another question. It was this: ---

"Did you offer me any provocation on the morning in question?"

"Stay," cried Captain Dell, leaning across the table. "In an admirable work which I have before me, I find it written that courts-martial should remember they assemble to try the prisoner, and not the prosecutor or any of his witnesses; " and down went his thumbnail on the margin of the page, and across the table was it handed to Colonel Jasper, who again made use of his magnifying glass, and again looked vacantly at the Deputy Judge-advocate-general, while Captain Dell, once more in triumph, surveyed his brother-officers with

a smile, which seemed to say, that he was proudly conscious of the superiority of his own knowledge over that of the Deputy Judge-advocate-general.

The President and Captain Dell's majority never troubled themselves to inquire whether the authority quoted bore upon the case;---that "there it was laid down," was quite sufficient to make them support Captain Dell's view. They assumed that Smith was trying the witness contrary to a well-established rule. The Deputy Judge-advocate-general again interposed, when, at Captain Dell's instance, the court was again cleared of the spectators and the prisoner.

Another debate, precisely similar to the last in loudness and length, ensued; and when it was over we were once more admitted to listen to the decision, which was that the question was irrelevant!

Let not the reader suppose that Captain Dell had any spite against Smith. On the contrary, he was the most impartial person that ever sat on a court-martial, as will be shown presently.

The prisoner then asked Mr. Holdrich if he could in any way account for what must have appeared a most unwarrantable outrage? And the Deputy Judge-advocate-general suggested that the question had better not be put.

"Why not?" demanded Captain Dell. "Now, that is something like a question." And he cleared the court upon it.

On this occasion we were an hour and three-quarters in the verandah. Captain Dell certainly was " going it," as a young ensign remarked. We could not hear his argument; but chips from the block of which it was made fell upon our ear's: " Simmonds says "--- "point at issue "---" hearsay "---" matter of the record" ---"hearken unto Kennedy"---"reserved for the defence; "--- phrases such as these were distinctly audible. When this third tumult had dwindled to a murmur, we were again informed, "The court's open!" and we followed the prisoner.

The President looked agitated, the Deputy Judge- advocate-general savage and disgusted, and Captain Dell, flushed with ~£~the contemplation of his success in " carrying " the court along with him, rested his chin upon the palm of Iris right hand, and looked at the ceiling. The question was allowed.

"How do you account for the outrage?" said Smith to the witness.

"The only way I can account for it is, that you were mad," said Holdrich.

"Mad!" muttered Captain Dell, compressing his lips, and turning to the index for the word " insane." A thought had struck him --- " if it could be proved that the prisoner was mad, why, he ought to be acquitted."

"I have no further questions to ask," said Smith.

Captain Dell then took the witness in hand.

"Surely you are not attempting to prove that the prisoner was out of his mind," said the Deputy Judgeadvocate-general to Captain Dell, after Dell had asked about thirteen questions which had certainly that end , and object in view.

Captain Dell cleared the court, and then battled the

point with the Deputy Judge-advocate-general in a manner which was more quaint, I think, than masterly. But somehow or other he was not successful in this last encounter. Defeat, however, did not damp Captain Dell's energies. Nay, it made him keener and more vigilant, and in another struggle, which he almost immediately created, he not only signally overthrew the Deputy Judge-advocate-general, hut caused the President to censure that functional-}' for disrespect to the court, in having expressed his own opinions on questions which had been solemnly decided by the court.

The Deputy Judge-advocate-general had been but recently appointed to the department, and, smarting under the rebuke, he was more temperate in the subsequent discussions, and no longer' used those strong words, "absurd," "childish," "ridiculous." As requested, he was " more guarded in future."

This trial lasted for nine days. Lieutenant Smith read aloud his defence. In that defence he dwelt upon the services he had rendered the state in Affghanistan. He was certainly a brave soldier, and few officers of his rank had ever performed such gallant, daring deeds. The men respected him, and would have followed him in any field, when with officers of less tact they would have run away and disgraced themselves. But Smith was woefully unpopular. He was disliked (except in the field of battle or on the parade-ground) by every officer in his own corps, as well as by the officers of other regiments. He was " a loose fish; " and his character, and not the offence for which he was tried, was fatal to his commission. Smith was dismissed the service.

We sold our old buggy and harness, our old horse, a watch, two plated dishes, and five silver spoons, and some other matters, to raise money enough to take him to Calcutta; whence, I believe, he embarked for England, with a view of memorialising the Court of Directors.

What possessed her I know not, but Mrs. Brill one morning sent my wife a very pretty pincushion. The gift touched Sophy's heart, and she pitied the poor country-bom, who was taken but little notice of by the other ladies of the corps, and she invited Mrs. Brill to spend a day with her. Mrs. Brill came, and gave my wife several lessons in housekeeping; but she could not profit by them, since they involved not only the starvation of myself, but that of my charger and the poultry. Our circumstances were desperate, it is true; but Mrs. Wetherby could not make up her mind to adopt Mrs. Brill's severe suggestions.

I was sitting in my dressing-room, writing, when my wife called out, " Robert, here is the paper for your subscription to poor Walsingham's monument."

I sighed, and said, "I cannot help it, dear. If you have the money, pay it. Sixteen rupees (1Z. 12s.)"

"Ah! they brought that paper to me this morning" (I overheard Mrs. Brill say to my wife); " but I told them to take it away again, and talked to Brill for being such a fool as to put his name down. The idea

of a lieutenant subscribing for, a Cornet's tombstone! If Brill had got a step by Walsingham, I would have cheerfully given two gold mohurs, but, as it is, not a pice comes out of my pocket; I'll take good care of that. I have no patience with people frittering away their rupees on a parcel of nonsense and hypocrisy, saying on the tomb-stone of everybody, that this is ereited by his brother-officers, as a token of regard and respect. I have known it put on the top of men who were hated by everybody. It is tree that you ought to respect a man who is above you for dying---but to do it for a Cornet! Take my advice, Mrs. Wetherby, send the man away, and tell him if ever he comes again you will make the Sahib give him a beating."

My wife was shocked at this speech, but, sad as were the recollections which the theme called up, I could scarcely keep down the laughter with which I was inwardly consumed.

"Mr. Walsingham was a great friend of ours," said my wife to Mrs. Brill.

"A great friend!" said Mrs. Brill. "He once took a glass of brandy-and-water at our house---half-and- half, Mrs. Wetherby---and I pretty soon saw what sort of a friend he'd be. His drinkings would have cost us thirty-two rupees, eight annas a month."

"But, poor young man! he is dead now," said my wife; " don't mention his faults."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Brill, "it does the living a great deal of harm not to mention the faults of the dead It encourages them to go on in wickedness. Ah! continued she, as my wife counted sixteen rupees ut of

H

<* our last thirty, which had been reserved for paying the servants, "how it would have touched Major We- therby's bosom to have parted with that money for such a purpose!"

"Would it?" said my wife.

" Wouldn't it?" said Mrs. Brill. "Now, that was a man to manage. He kept down everybody's expenses."

"How do you meau?" my wife inquired.

"Why, for instance," said Mrs. Brill, "he would never subscribe to any of these balls, where they give stuff made in Calcutta called champagne, for sixty rupees (6Z.) a dozen. In his day, these young men could get up a ball which would only cost each of them four or five rupees; but now, because there's nobody to put the thing down, they have to pay twenty- five and thirty rupees each, being at the same time over head and ears in debt. I should have liked to hear any young gentleman say to Major Wetherby, 'We must give champagne because the Lancers do it.' Wouldn't the Major have drawn his hand across his sharp chin, then curled his moustache, read him a lecture, and twitted his very soul out? You know the way the Major used to look when he was very angry, but pretended to be amused, and in a good temper?"

I did, but my wife did not. She had never spoken to my father, and she said,---

"I never had the pleasure of Major Wetherby's acquaintance."

"Don't you know the Cornet's father?" said Mrs. Brill.

"Mr. Wetherby is not a cornet," said my wife, who

was always greatly provoked that I should be spoken of as " the Cornet," when I was more than half way up the list of lieutenants, and well on for my troop.

"Oh! I know what Mr. Wetherby's rank is," said Mrs. Brill; " you need not make yourself jealous on my account, I assure you. I am the grand-daughter of Major-general Sir Buubetine Mactaren, K.C.B., and I Never mind, it is not worth while talking about."

It certainly was not worth while talking about, seeing that poor Mrs. Brill's grandmother was a black lady of the very lowest caste.

I went into the room to put an end to a discussion which I felt was unpleasant to my wife, and I said to Mrs. Brill, laughing with my eyes all the while, "Well, how are you getting on?"

"Getting on!" said Mrs. Brill, dashing away contemptuously the band I proffered her; " don't use such vulgar language to me, pray. If some people give themselves airs" (she looked at my wife), "other people " (she drew herself up) " must bring those people down. I say, Major Wetherby was a man."

"And who ever disputed it?" said I.

" She did," said Mrs. Brill, tossing her head (in which was the bottle of beer she drank at tiffin) towards my wife. " She did; and I maintain that Mrs. Wetherby, your mother, was a woman, yes, and a lady --- an assistant Adjutant-general of Queen's Forces's daughter!"

My wife left the room, and after pacifying Mrs Brill, by saying,---

"You must excuse her jealousy, you know, when

you consider how beautiful you are, and how much all men admire you "

I took her home to worry her husband---a duty which she commenced by asking him whatever could have induced her to become the wife of such a miserable thing as himself?

"Dearest!" replied Brill, "what have I done?"

" Suer! " (pig), she rejoined.

"My love?" rebutted Brill.

"Beast!" sur-rebutted his awful partner.

I left them at this point. The next morning we heard that Mrs. Brill had broken a water-jug over her husband's head, and I had reason to believe there was some truth in the report, for Brill was not at parade, and the doctor's buggy was seen at his door for at least two hours.

A run of very bad luck now attended us. We went to dine quietly with the Baxters, and when we returned discovered that in our absence the bungalow had been robbed. Our plate---the little that we had left---my wife's medicine-chest and dressing-case, my sword, pistols, and saddle, were all carried away. The ayah was lying in one of the rooms, in a state of unconsciousness, and under the influence of some very powerful narcotic; none of the other servants were to be found, dead or alive. It was impossible for us to pay the next instalment due to the bank, and the interest of the 1000 rupees which --- to purchase a charger to supply Clarion's place---I had been compelled to borrow at twenty

per cent per annujn, from a shroff (native banker), out of my next month's pay; and we therefore determined to sell our furniture, except those articles which it was absolutely necessary for us to retain; and, in accordance with this resolution, we sent round a list, and having marked the goods at low prices, in order to raise the money speedily, they were soon taken off our hands, and out of our house.

Mrs. Baxter, the Colonel's wife, came to call, and observing the bare state of our abode, and guessing the cause, she insisted on our going to live with them for a short time, until, as she delicately put it, my wife's troubles were over. This kind offer we were induced to accept, and the next day we became inmates of the Baxters' house.

A week had scarcely passed away when our son and heir came into the world. Mrs. Baxter seemed as proud of the child as though it had been her own. But, alas! her joy was of brief duration. That night she was attacked by cholera, and died after an illness of only three hours. The native soldiers of the regiment attended the funeral, and sympathised with their officers, who shed tears when they saw the remains of one of the best-hearted beings that ever breathed lowered into their last resting-place on earth. The poor old Colonel was almost broken-hearted. There he stood--- his hair and moustache as white as snow---bending over the grave in the depth of abstraction. They had been married thirty-five years, and it was believed that during that period they had never had a difference. It was no easy task to lead the old Colonel away, even after the grave had been filled up, the mound of earth patted down, and the burial completed.

Mrs. Baxter's death was kept a secret from my wife, and my heart was ready to burst when she said, "Why does not Mrs. Baxter come to see me, Robert? Do bring her here to look at the boy."

---

There was something so cheerless and wretched about Colonel Baxter's house, now that its mistress no longer presided over its affairs, that as soon as my wife was able to move we left it; and we did so rather earlier than we should have otherwise done, because we fancied our presence bored the old Colonel and disturbed his reveries. We then went to chum with an officer and his wife who were as hard up as burselves; but they wrangled so much that we were soon forced to take a small bungalow for ourselves. Here I racked my brains in thinking how 1 could possibly make money to increase our income. I was brooding over my difficulties, and becoming morose and ill-tempered, and wishful for drink to banish my despair. Brill fed fowls and pigeons, and made money by the occupation, and I thought of doing the same; but Sophy prophesied we should lose by this labour, and I was eventually deterred from a " spec" in feathers. At last it struck me I would try the press. My father made money by his pen, and why should not I? But I had vastly over-rated my literary powers, or else the editor to whom I sent my contributions was a very stupid person. He said he had no objection to publish my articles in the shape of letters, but that they were not up to the stan

dard of the matter for which he paid money. How sick that editor's reply made me! How I longed to thrash him before going to bed that night! Sophy was satisfied the man had some spite against me, and I was unreasonable enough to be of .her way of thinking. I w'as further so silly as to lie awake the whole night, meditating how I might have my revenge; and the next morning at our coffee-shop, in the adjutant's verandah, I proposed that the mess should " drop" the paper (to which I had been anxious to contribute) on the ground that it had grown dull of late, and was not worth the- postage.

"We can borrow it," I said, "from the mess of the 16th, if it ever contains anything worth reading."

I had a majority in my favour, for few were w'illing to oppose the wishes of the Colonel, over whom I had great influence, and who instantly responded,---" Yes, Bobby; he is dull. By all means, let us drop him."

I then went to several people who took in the paper, and advised them not to subscribe independently, but to club up, and thus avoid expense. There was nothing too mean, or too petty, for me not to resort to.

Reader, have you ever been told that your writing was not worth being paid for? If you have not, you can form no idea of the bitter feeling which it provokes. It makes you detest mankind, and imagine that all the world is in a conspiracy to put down real talent, and give place to inferior productions. No man is himself for several days after a pet contribution has been " declined "---even if it be declined in the politest manner imaginable. Poor as I was, I would not have altered

the opinion I had just arrived at --- that the press of India was, without any exception, the most blackguardly, unscrupulous, and licentious press in the world---no, not if the editor had offered me a hundred rupees a column for writing for him.

---

When was our ill-luck to end? Mr. Revelle, who had not the least idea of our difficulties, had sent his daughter a box containing several handsome dresses, a couple of bonnets, a quantity of kid-gloves, some artificial flowers, and an assortment of Berlin wools. Sophy had resolved to sell the greater part of these things to reduce our heavy debt to the Agra Bank, and she was all impetuosity to have the box opened when it arrived. I opened it, and turned out the contents. They had not been packed in tin, and the sea-air had spotted and destroyed every article. We had paid 4Z. 10s. for land - carriage of what was not worth anything. I was distressed to see Sophy weep over this beautiful wTeck, but I could not reprove her.

Another misfortune! The Governor-general was about to pass through the station, and the station must needs give a ball. When I saw his Lordship at this festive scene, yawning, and evidently wishing us further for doing him the honour of keeping him up till two o'clock in the morning, I could not help thinking whether his Lordship had any idea how miserably poor were all those who had " subscribed," and how dull were the majority of hearts beating beneath those gay uniforms by which he was surrounded?

I was sitting upon a sofa, talking to Mrs. Brill about the " expense," but at the same time watching everybody, and was immensely amused and disgusted at the bowing, and fawning, and my-lording of the various leading personages in the room, who crept, or rather crawled, about the person of the Governorgeneral. Their countenances reminded me of those dogs in Landseer's famous picture of " Jack in Office; " but the scene was more humiliating. In the canine species hunger seems to prompt the advance; in the other species, the filthy obsequiousness of the courtiers of Japan was the most striking feature. Suddenly, the Governor-general recollected my face, and walking hastily through the throng, by which he was hemmed in, he came up, gave me his hand, and said,---

"Well, Mr. Wetherby, how do you do? Keep race-horses and play cards still? Sing songs at second suppers, eh?"

"No, my Lord," said I, rising, "I have grown older and wiser."

At that moment an aide-de-camp approached and said, "The carriage is ready, my Lord."

The Governor-general seemed delighted to hear it, and bade me good-night with a frank cordiality which would have been received with raptures by many of the loathsome sycophants who beheld it.

Sady, the greatest of Persian poets, thus sings: ---

"While sitting in my bath one day, There came a piece of scented clay From some friend's hand to mine. I said, ' Thou'rt musk or ebery; For this delicious scent of thine

My senses hath enchanted.'

' A piece of clay,' it answered me,

' But mingling with the rose, she has In me her sweets implanted.

I am the self-clay' ■ ---■

And so I. The very circumstance of the Governorgeneral of India having spoken to me, a poor lieutenant in the Company's Bengal Cavalry---and further, having shaken me by the hand warmly,---I give you my word, reader, when the Governor-general took his departure, I was surrounded by many of his flatterers, who appeared to fancy that I was actually imbued with the essence of his Lordship's greatness. A superintendingsurgeon, who had never returned my call, came up and apologised for not having done so; the brigadier, who had scarcely bowed to me before, took an opportunity of assuring me, in the most emphatic manner, that he had particularly noticed the excellent order of the troop under my command, and had spoken of it to the general commanding the division. And not only was I subjected to this painful degradation, but my poor wife was not allowed to escape. The most intensely vulgar woman that I ever beheld (the wife of a commissioner) squatted herself beside Mrs. Wetherby, and admired her dress and cameo bracelets. How enchanted was I when Sophy, cutting her flatterer's speeches short, tripped across the room, and said,---

"Robert, it is getting very late, and I am anxious about the boy. We have been away from him a long time."

Thank heaven, we were both of us proud enough to be insulted by the offensive attention which the Governor-general's recognition of me had drawn down upon us.

How is it that there never can be a race or a ball in India without its being followed by a row? And how was it that, somehow or other, I was always " mixed up " with the affair, either directly or indirectly?

At about dawn of day, an officer of my regiment, one Lieutenant Edgecombe, came down to our bungalow, and told my servants to arouse me. After manytappings at the bed-room door, this feat was accomplished. The child first heard the noise, and began to cry. The mother then was awakened, and she pulled my moustache, and uttered those horrible words,--- " Robby, the first bugle has sounded. Don't be late for parade. Your charger is neighing, Robert; do get up. Don't swear, Robert."

I left my room, and went out into the verandah, where I usually dressed for parade. There I found Edgecombe, who was murderously drunk, and attempting to suck smoke out of a cheroot, the fire of which had been long before extinguished. The chirping of the birds, the perfume of the orange-blossoms, and the report of the morning gun, which shook the windows, had completely aroused me, and I said, "Hulloa! what do you do here, Edgecombe? Why haven't you taken off that full dress? You can't appear in it on parade!"

"Parade!---there is no parade to-day. Baxter told me so last night," said Edgecombe. "No---no parade. I am going to shoot him." And forming himself into

the shape of a letter S, Edgecombe took an aim, with an imaginary pistol, at a mulberry-tree in the garden. "Come along, old fellow; come along, Cornet. Come, and be my second," said he.

Thinking that Edgecombe was labouring under^-^ some delusion, I said, " But who's your adversary?"

"That fellow, Paxton, of the Lancers," said Edgecombe.

"What has he done?" I inquired.

"Called me out."

"For what has he called you out?"

"Pinching his wife's elbow, he says; but I deny it.

Come along, Weth'by; we'll settle him."

What was my horror to find that this was no delusion of Edgecombe's; for up rode Paxton's second to my bungalow!

Paxton's second was Lieutenant Stubbs, of the Lancers.

"Come along, Wetherby," said Stubbs to me, "or we shall have the sun up. Paxton is on the ground, at the back of the church."

Stubbs was decidedly " screwed," and bent upon mischief.

Edgecombe mounted his horse, and again called to me to " come along, Cornet."

" If you don't, I will second them both," said Stubbs.

Edgecombe was a very old friend of mine. In our younger days we lived together; and in the hope that I might settle the matter amicably, I mounted my charger, and away the three of us cantered to the appointed spot, where Paxton, sure enough, was---walking about, in a very blood-thirsty state of mind.

The weapons were lying, loaded, on a cloak, and all looked very like " business."

Again I inquired if the matter could not be settled amicably.

All cried out simultaneously, "No I"

Stubbs was of opinion that it was too delicate a subject to be talked about; Edgecombe was too obstinate to acknowledge that he pinched the lady's elbow, and, having denied it, he declined to apologise; and Paxton was too far gone in liquor and in rage to have accepted an apology, even if it had been offered.

Good heavens! I saw a loaded pistol in the hands of that man, Edgecombe! He had taken it off the cloak, and was looking at its lock! The muzzle was in my direction! And Paxton now was armed!

"Putthem up," said I to Stubbs; "but, remember, by the last laws of duelling, both seconds are to lie down."

"All right," said Stubbs; and measured off twelve very crooked --- zig-zagged --- paces. There stood our principals. Each pistol was a revolver---in one sense of the word, for the right arm of each man was describing circles, or rather eccentric ovals.

How I hugged the earth, when Stubbs, who was also lying on his stomach close beside me, called out, "Are you ready?"

Bang! went Paxton's pistol, instantly.

"Then fire!" cried Stubbs.

Paxton, who was very drunk, staggered, and fell. Edgecombe then shut his eyes, drew his trigger, and his pistol went off with a loud report. Observing that no one was standing but himself when he opened his eyes, Edgecombe cried out, "I thought that was into him, Weth'by; I have done it. AH right, Weth'by."

"You have done it!" I groaned. "It is into him ---into me, your own second I Oh 1 "

I had received the bullet from Edgecombe's pistol in a fleshy part of me, and there it lodged. I contrived to get home, and sent for our assistant-surgeon, who came and extracted the ball. He was laughing during the whole time of the operation---he could not help it ---while I was writhing in agony; and while my wife--- terrified out of her wits, lest the consequences should be fatal---was walking about in the next room.

When Sophy was satisfied there was no danger, she tenderly inquired of me, with our boy in her arms, "Was it not very foolish and wicked of you, Robert, to be a second in a duel?"

"It was, my dear," said I; " but who could have calculated on such a calamity as that which has befallen me? Never mind; it is all for the best. If anybody ever calls me out, or asks me to be a second again, I shall show cause against it, by pointing to this absurd instance of my folly and wickedness combined."

Chapter IV.

My wife was beginning to suffer from the climate of India. The roses had fled from her cheeks, and she was now as pale as though she had been in the East for twenty summers. She looked thirty years of age. A lady belonging to our regiment---Mrs. Fifeleigh, a very handsome woman---was going to the hills for the benefit of her health, and I was determined---little as we could afford the expense---that Sophy shordd accompany her; and that " between musters" I would contrive to get away from regimental duty for a month. The separation---the very idea of it---caused us both much pain; but it was absolutely necessary that the mother and her child should breathe, for a season, the pure air of the Himalayas.

The success of the Agra Bank had brought into the field a competitor---another institution, which was anxious for the custom of the army at large; and I applied for a loan of 1000 rupees (100Z.), offering a couple of lieutenants, who, like myself, were over head and ears in debt, as my securities. The application was immediately granted, and the money advanced by the accommodating secretary of the new bank. So speedily

was the business arranged that my securities went security for each other, and I for each of them, and obtained loans likewise. One took 3000 rupees (300Z.), and the other two 2500 rupees (250Z.) We were all, therefore, jointly and severally, in consequence of our mutual favours, responsible to the new bank for 6500 rupees (6501.)

On the strength of their loans my securities gave a ball, and at the second supper the secretary of the new bank had his health drunk (in his absence, of course, for he was 200 miles distant) in the most enthusiastic manner. I was also toasted for being the means of introducing my securities to the new secretary, and three Cornets at that supper agreed to have " a mild dig" at the new bank---"the sucking-do-the-boys," as this rival of the Agra Bank was facetiously called. The " dig " was simply this: Cornets A and B were security for Cornet C; Cornets B and C for Cornet A; and Cornets A and C for Cornet B. Each Cornet procured a loan of 1500 rupees (150Z.), and spent it, "like men," some said.

My wife had not been more than a fortnight in the hills, when, in one of her letters, she expressed a desire to return to the plains. 1 fancied she was " fidgety " because I was alone, and I represented to her, in my reply, the absurdity of her proposal. She repeated her desire, but gave no reason for washing to return. Her friend and chum, Mrs. Fifeleigh, in writing to her husband in the most affectionate strain, and assuring him that to be parted was very hard to bear, incidentally mentioned that "dear Sophy Wetherby'' was greatly improved in looks, and that the boy was also much the better for the change of air. I, therefore, considered my wife was unreasonable, and rather selfish, and in my next letter I spoke to her in very plain terms. But, instead of arguing the point, she insisted on my joining her, or else making arrangements for her immediate return. There was something mysterious about this last communication. I could not understand it, and I at once procured a month's leave, and proceeded to Mussoorie. I was greeted with,---

"Oh, Robert! you must take me out of this house immediately."

"But why?" I inquired.

"Because I cannot remain any longer under the same roof with Mrs. Fifeleigh."

"Just like you women. You cannot live together for a month without having some difference."

"I have no difference with Mrs. Fifeleigh, no quarrel."

"Then why do you wish to go away?"

"Robert, you are so violent, so hasty, that I am almost afraid to tell you what has happened."

"Has any one annoyed you? If so, tell me instantly who it is." (I stood up and looked in her face.)

"There now, RobertI you are ready to knock any person down, and endanger your commission. I will tell you all, but promise me that "

"I shall promise you nothing whatsoever, except that I will act upon my own judgment---proceed!"

Sophy proceeded as follows:---

i

"Shortly after we came to the hills, Mrs. Fifeleigh, at a ball, made the acquaintance of a gentleman who has of late been so intimate that he spends nearly all his time in this house. He comes to breakfast --- stays till tiffin---tiffs---remains till it is time to go upon the Mall---returns to dinner---and then stays till long after I have retired to my room. I have several times hinted to her that I thought she was imprudent, but she only laughed at me."

"Well?" said I.

"Well, all those affectionate letters which she writes to her husband are dictated by her friend, who walks about the room, roaring with laughter, while she is writing them."

I confess I could not help smiling when I heard this, for I had seen Fifeleigh read those endearing letters, and, with tears in his eyes, passionately kiss them.

"Is the woman mad?" I inquired.

"She must be," said my wife, "for of all the ugly, miserable-looking, little men in the world, I believe this friend of hers " (My wife did not finish the

sentence.)

"What is his name?"

"Wintie---Captain Wintie. They have gone today to the waterfalls; but he will dine here. There are two bottles of champagne in the hail which fell the other day. They enjoy themselves, I assure you."

"Who finds the wine?"

"She does. The hundred rupees which Fifeleigh sent her to buy the pony she said she wanted, bought two dozens of Todd and James's, for Captain Wintie cannot---says he cannot --- drink anything below that famous brand."

"Has she not got the pony, then?"

"Oh, yes, Wintie gave her one."

"Then they are drinking the pony?"

"How can you laugh, Robert? How would you like me to go on in that way, while you were broiling in the plains?"

"Not at all, Sophy; but you know that in the misfortunes of our most intimate friends there is always something which is far from displeasing. However, I will do my best to put an end to this conduct of hers, and if I see that she is determined to pursue it, I will remove you at once."

"Under any circumstances I will not remain with her, Robert; nor speak to her again."

"Why?"

"I have made up my mind on that point. I have seen too much already."

"Then you have not told me all?"

My wife made no answer, but left the room abruptly.

I had known Mrs. Fifeleigh for several years. She was a rather frivolous person, but I did not think her capable of any serious impropriety. Her husband, Jack Fifeleigh, was a gallant, generous fellow, who loved her to devotion. I had met Captain Wintie in former days, and entirely concurred in the opinion expressed by my wife with reference to his ugliness and personal appearance generally.

How was I to act? Mrs. Fifeleigh's affairs were no

business of mine, although her husband was in my regiment. And what guarantee had I that Fifeleigh might not be ths very first person to say so if I interfered with Captain Wintie's visits to the house?

Mrs. Fifeleigh and Wintie returned about sunset. The lady was evidently a good deal annoyed at my unexpected presence, but she feigned that she was very glad to see me; and Wintie expressed how delighted, how joyed he was to renew my acquaintance, although I could see he wished me with my regiment in the plains, or, in fact, anywhere, so long as I was not in Mussoorie.

Wintie was, without exception, the smallest man in the army, and perhaps the most consequential. With his hat on he could have walked beneath my extended arm. Mrs. Fifeleigh was a tall woman, of about seven- and-twenty years of age. Wintie paying her attention, and looking up into her face, was the most ridiculous scene imaginable. Fifeleigh was a muscular Scotchman, a Highlander of noble origin, who stood six feet three in his stockings. He could have put Wintie in his peacoat pocketI My wife objected to come to the dinnertable, but at last I coaxed her to do so, to oblige me. I was several times greatly provoked at the free and easymanner in which Wintie gave orders to the servants, but I kept ray temper, and treated him with extreme courtesy. Mrs. Fifeleigh seemed evidently much attached to this epitome, or diamond edition, of the human species. To tell the truth, she was desperately in love with Wintie.

At eleven o'clock, Mrs. Wetherby retired; but Mrs.

Fifeleigh did not move, and Wintie showed no disposition to take his departure. Tired as I was after my day's journey, I determined to see Wintie out of the house. At half-past twelve, Mrs. Fifeleigh said " good night" to us; and Win tie then began to talk to me on matters in general. It ended in Wintie inviting me to breakfast with him next day at one o'clock, at the Himalaya Club, and I accepted, on condition that he would allow me to go to bed at once.

Sophy had packed her boxes while I was talking to Wintie. She was all ready to quit her present abode, and leave Mrs. Fifeleigh in sole possession of the house which they bad rented jointly. With great difficulty I extracted from her that Mrs. Fifeleigh's imprudence had been very flagrant indeed; and I no longer opposed the resolution she had come to about breaking off her acquaintance. Fifeleigh was acting as adjutant of our regiment, and I knew that to hint to him that he had better come to the hills would be useless. Nothing short of telling him the truth would have induced him to leave the plains at that critical moment; and I was not disposed to meddle to that extent in a matter so very delicate, albeit Fifeleigh's honour was deeply concerned. As for calling Wintie out, Fifeleigh would have done nothing of the kind. He would have seized Wintie with one hand, and killed him with the' other ; and probably, in his rage, he would have treated his wife in the same manner.

I made an excuse for not breakfasting with Wintie, and went to search for a small house. Mrs. Fifeleigh guessed the cause of my wife's anxiety to live alone,

for she could not look in my face when I took leave of her.

• • 4: sk sjc

I went to the Himalaya Club to visit an old friend; and in the billiard-room I encountered Wintie. He was playing a match. Billiards were a source of revenue with Wintie. While I was sitting on the bench watching the game, Wintie, who was winning cleverly, began to make merry at my expense. I had replied to a question of his that I never played, and he had had the impudence to say I was under the influence of petticoat government; and he went on to express several opinions (some of them were very true) touching the inconveniences of matrimony. He had even the audacity to quote a sentiment of Conversation Sharpe--- that no man ought to marry if his friends do; and the by-standers were not a little amused at Wintie's wit.

" Geem!" cried the marker (a Madras man, who spoke through his nose), as the red ball darted like lightning into the middle pocket, at the instance of Wintie's cue, and a buzz of admiration ran through the room. Wintie certainly had wonderful " execution " at billiards.

"There, Wetherby!" said Wintie. "Come, take a stick; I'll give you five points in fifty-one, and play you for five gilders, or for love. I am a slave to my propensities."

"Give me ten, and I may be tempted, Captain," said I, smiling blandly, under the influence of feelings which suggested a cold-blooded revenge. "Give me ten, Captain, and I will double the stakes."

"Anything to oblige a man who has such a charming partner in life." (The audience laughed heartily.) " Anything to oblige. Spot the red, marker, and Mr. Wetherby will go off."

I chalked a cue, and went off.

Wintie won the game, and I lost ten golden mohurs (16Z.) Wintie winked at the company, and asked me what my wife would say.

I replied that she would not hear of it, and begged of him to give me an opportunity of winning my money back.

Wintie said, "Oh, yes," winked at the company again, offered me fifteen points, and repeated that he was a slave to his propensities.

I was not proud; so I took the fifteen points.

Wintie became liberal in the extreme, and volunteered to " break the balls."

I suffered him to do so, and thanked him.

Throughout the game Wintie made a butt of me.

I was " off my play," and Wintie won the game! I was a loser of 32Z.---twenty gold mohurs!

Wintie said, "Double or quits, old boy?"

•" Done," I replied.

Wintie winked at the company again, and allowed me to win easily. He now was holding back his play.

My feigned joy at the result made the company laugh immensely. Wintie challenged me again. He offered me twenty points if I would play for a hundred gold mohurs---160f.

I took the bet, and broke the balls.

I won the game --- well, but clumsily, amidst cries of " Luck! luck! what beastly luck!"

I now had established a raw. Wintie proposed double or quits, and it was now my privilege to say, "Anything to oblige and I availed myself of it.

I won the game. Wintie now owed me 320Z. The raw became serious; and Wintie said, "Your play is improved by practice, Wetherby. Come, I'll give you ten, and play you double or quits."

It was once more my privilege to say, "Anything to oblige and I once more availed myself of it.

We commenced the game, and during its continuance Wintie kept up a conversation which was peculiarly disgusting to the ears of a married man, and to the Bengal Cavalry generally, and to a member of my regiment in particular. The officers of the Bengal Cavalry, according to Wintie's account, were all " snobs their wives were all " queer," even the most pretending of " 'em." But no amount of indiscriminate vulgarity, intended for satire, could then put me off my play; and I won the game I Wintie owed me 640Z. With what satisfaction did I put my hand upon his shoulder, and remark,--- »

"What a treasure you are, Wintie!"

One often sees a great deal of life in a billiard-room. Those from whom Wintie had been winning were ready to embrace me, and laugh Wintie to scorn. His prestige had vanished. I was the Emperor, notwithstanding the majority fancied that it was to luck, and not to skill, that I was indebted for my success.

Wintie wished to play another game. "Even for double or quits---a hundred up?" I declined, on the ground that practice had made me a better player than himself. He insulted me, but!• took no notice of it ; for I felt that he had not been sufficiently punished in pocket, and that to quarrel with him would be absurdly unprofitable. So I appealed to the company present, whether they thought I ought to accept Wintie's challenge?

The company said, "Oh, yes---fire away I"

Wintie went off, and left the red ball over the centre pocket. He was mad with rage, notwithstanding he tried to affect his usual self-possession. I coolly scored eighteen off the break, and left him nothing to play for, except safety, which he missed, for I went in and scored up to " 47, to love," amidst loud murmurs of the most delicious applause.

I won the game. Wiutle owed me 1280Z.

Some young person had left the billiard-room before the last game was concluded, and had gone upon the Mall to tell all the world at Mussoorie that long Wetherby was making a fortune out of little Wintie. This soon reached my wife's ears, and she hurried home to write to nre---to request me to leave off instanter. But when she arrived at home, she found me calculating how much I owed, with a view to liquidating my debts, as soon as Wintie paid me his losings.

"Oh, Robert, you have been gambling I" cried my wife. "Everybody on the Mall is talking about it."

"I am glad of that," said I. " The notoriety will make it doubly painful to the victim."

My wife began to cry, because I had broken my promise, and had gambled. She thought I might have resented Wintie's impertinence in some other way; and she objected to my taking the money I had won!

Wintie had not the money to pay me, so I drove him to apply to a bank for a loan, and meanwhile I made him give me his promissory note, payable on demand, and endorsed by at least half-a-dozen of his friends ; and I gave Wintie to understand that if the whole amount was not paid within a month, I would get the note cashed by an agent in Calcutta. Wintie raised the money, and paid me by a cheque for 12,800 rupees, 1280Z.! How pleasant were those life-drops which I drank from Wintie's bleeding breast!

In India, the European community is like a huge family. Every one knows the other; and no matter how widely scattered and thinly spread over those vast dominions we may be, every one is acquainted with the other's affairs. It was soon known at Simlah, at headquarters, that " the Cornet "had let in that " little beast Wintie " for a good round sum; and the General of the division, who happened to be at Mussoorie, sent for me and informed me that it was the order of the Commander-in-chief that the remainder of my leave should be cancelled, and that both myself and Captain Wiutle should immediately join our respective regiments.

Sophy could no longer trust me alone, she said, and prepared to journey with me from the Hills to Umballah.

At a dak bungalow (staging-house), at a place called

Mohun, at the foot of the pass, we stayed during the day to rest our wearied frames. The room next to ours was occupied by two travellers, whose voices we could hear indistinctly. Towards evening, just as we were about to resume our journey, I fancied I heard my own name mentioned in the next room. I listened. It was Wintie in the next room, pouring forth a torrent of abuse on " that scoundrel Wetherby;" and--- could it be possible?---yes, it was no other than Mrs. Fifeleigh with him, joining in his denunciation of not only myself, but of my wife!" Can the woman be mad?" I asked myself. She must have been mad.

I looked through the crevices of the door, and saw her petarehs, as well as Wintie's, in the apartment. She was running away with the pigmy 1

Pale and agitated---partly with rage, and partly with pity, for the woman's fate --- I made known to my wife the fact which had just come to my knowledge. To my surprise she answered, "I am very glad to hear it. It is better she should run off---it is even less dishonourable--- than to return to Fifeleigh, after her conduct in the Hills."

*

Presently the voices in the next room became louder. We could hear every word that was uttered. Wintie and Mrs. Fifeleigh were quarrelling, already. The former acknowledged, that instead of being rich, he was now deeply in debt; and the latter had begun to discover that she had made a sad mistake, which she hinted it was not too late to repair. Wintie caught at this, and recommended her to return to the Hills. Mrs.

Fifeleigh agreed to the proposal, and thanked her stars that she had a husband in whose eyes she was above the atmosphere of suspicion. Here I gave Mrs. Fifeleigh and Wintie notice that I was in their vicinity, by singing loudly a verse of an old song which the lady had very frequently heard me sing in her own comfortable home. There was silence in the next room. That verse was a death-blow to all the arrangements which had been completed five minutes previously.

How shall I describe the scene which ensued? Mrs. Fifeleigh rushed into our room, in an agony of grief; she threw herself at my feet, and implored me to have mercy upon her. Until that visit to Mussoorie she had never been separated from her manly husband, who loved her --- ay, worshipped her. To see her a fallen, degraded creature, linked to a contemptible thing like Wintie, who was already weary of her --- to think she could have been so wicked, so insane --- I could not help shedding tears, notwithstanding I said to her, "You must not remain in this room. I will speak to you outside. You have forfeited the right to be in the same room with a virtuous woman."

I led the unhappy being out of the room, and gave her the only advice that under such painful circumstances I could think of. It was --- to make the best of her way to England, and seek an asylum amongst the members of her own family. She was -well connected, and had several relatives who could afford to support her. She now began to rave about " Jack," her husband, and dwelt on his past kindness, to which I had so often been a witness. She even drew from her pocket

his last letter. She begged of me to tell him a variety of things, and made me promise that I would announce the awful news to him in the most delicate manner, so that his big heart might not be broken. At this moment Wintie, winding up his watch, made his appear ance, and showed a disposition to approach us. But I cautioned him against doing so, and he retired to his room.

---

When the men were about to lift my wife's palankeen, the wretched Mrs. Fifeleigh came to the door of it, and supplicated a last "farewell"---"once more a shake of the hand," she said, while the tears were rolling down her cheeks. There was no answer to her entreaty given from within the palankeen; but my wife called out to the men, Outhke chello! (Lift, and go on!)

"Then let me kiss the child, Mrs. Wetherby!"

Mrs. Fifeleigh was the boy's godmother; and the socks then upon his feet, and the cap upon his head, had been knitted by her hands.

Outhke chello! screamed my wife to the men.

"They shall not go on!" cried Mrs. Fifeleigh; and she called to the men --- Jou! jou! (Begone! begone!) Palkee mut-outhou! (Do not lift the palankeen!)

I went round to the other door of the palankeen.

"Sophy, dearest," said I, in the tenderest tone that my voice could command, "say farewell to her!"

"Are you drunk or mad?" was the reply; and my ■wife plucked passionately from the head and the feet of the child (who was old enough to think we were quarrelling, and who called out " papa " to me, and then looked in his mother's face) the worsted garments, which she suddenly remembered were the presents of the wretched " Mary Jane."

I snatched from her hand these little things which she was about to fling away, and put them into the pocket of my shooting-coat; and I said, ---

"Sophy, dearest, bid her good-bye. Let her kiss the child. Let us not be delayed any longer."

"Mrs. Wetherby!" cried the unhappy woman, from the other door of the palankeen, which my wife had bolted, "Mrs. Wetherby! say one word to me !"

Outhou chello! screamed my wife; and my boy, taking his mother's part, sat up, and screamed out the same words, Outhou chello! His likeness to my pragmatical brother, Charles, was at that moment so striking, that I was almost tempted to pull his little pug nose; but I curbed my feelings, and addressed my discourse to his mother, who had thrown her head on the pillow', seemingly exhausted by the repetition of the words which she had so often repeated in reply to Mrs. Fifeleigh's piteous supplication.

" Dear Mrs. Wetherby! --- oh, only one word! Say good-bye to me."

"Is it true, Sophy," I asked ---

"That every woe a tear can claim, Except an erring sister's shame?"

"Yes," she responded; and again called to the men, Outhou chello! --- a mandate which my indignant child echoed, while he waved me off.

The men lifted the palankeen, and proceeded on their way. Mrs. Fifeleigh threw her white and beautifully moulded arms round my neck, bit her lips in an ecstasy of despair, and cried aloud,---

"For God's sake, Robert Wetherby, save me! Sophy despises me; but don't you do so."

It was useless to attempt to solace the distracted woman; and after again advising her to go home to her friends in England --- I tore myself away from her.

*

When w'e arrived at Umballah, the first person I met was Jack Fifeleigh. He came to make inquiries about his wife's health --- how she was looking --- and whether she was comfortable or not in her abode? I could not break the awful truth to him, and therefore I evaded his questions. I thought it would be better that the old Colonel should be the first person to make Fifeleigh acquainted with what had befallen him, and as soon as he left me I hurried to Colonel Baxter's house.

W^T^hat w'as my surprise to find the old Colonel completely changed in appearance! His snow-white hair, eyebrows, and moustache, had become quite black; and a front tooth, which he had lost some thirty years previously, had been replaced by a dentist. Fie was dressed in a new frogged coat, and wore neatly made patent leather boots and silver spurs. He was the very reverse, in all respects, of what I had ever known him. I began to think that I was dreaming; --- that my winnings at billiards --- Mrs. Fifeleigh's elopement --- and Colonel Baxter's present appearance --- were links in a long chain of illusion.

The Colonel showed me a letter he had just received from his friend, the Adjutant-general, in which was the following paragraph: --- " What a fool was young Wetherby to go gambling at Mussoorie! Had it not been for this he would have been appointed to the next vacancy in the Deputy Judge-advocate-general's department; for the Governor-general spoke to the Commander-in-chief about him, and said, if he is steady, give him the next best thing that becomes vacant. This gambling is, of course, death to all young Wetherby 's hopes; so he loses a place worth 100Z. a month 1 "

"It is very sad, Colonel," said I, "but I have a sadder tale to tell you --- about poor Jack Fifeleigh "s wife."

"What is that? Has she fallen over a precipice and killed herself? She has been riding veiy hard on the Mall, I hear."

"Something worse than that even, Colonel."

"Worse than that! Well, what is it?"

I related to Colonel Baxter all that had happened. The old man rose from his chair, and glared at me for several minutes.

"Gracious heaven!" gasped the Colonel, "and does Fifeleigh know of this?"

"No, Colonel," said I, "and I am really afraid to tell him. I wish you would do so."

"Mary Jane eloped with a penniless pigmy!" The^1^ old Colonel repeated that sentence half-a-dozen times. "Mary Jane! Who could have thought that she would be such a fool! And so wicked! Why, Fifeleigh was

a slave to her! His whole thought was absorbed in considering how to make her happy! Ah, well! a woman, a dog, and a walnut-tree, the worse you treat 'em the better they be; " and the old Colonel sighed, and said, " You must break this matter to Fifeleigh, Cornet, for I can't."

On my way home from Colonel Baxter's I met Fifeleigh again. He was mounted on his charger, and was about to visit the lines. I, too, was on horseback.

"Turn about, Wetherby," said Fifeleigh, "and come along with me. I have a queer bit of fun to tell you, if you have not heard it already. I sent the whole account up to Mary Jane yesterday morning, and by this time she will have read my letter. I can fancy I hear her laughing over it at this very moment."

"What is it, Jack?" I inquired. "I have heard nothing funny lately."

"You have seen old Baxter?"

"I have."

"Saw a great change in him?"

"I did; a change for the worse. He looked like a venerable old soldier a fortnight ago, and now he looks like a painted and made-up worn-out fop."

"And you don't know the reason?"

"No --- what is it?"

Fifeleigh checked his charger, halted in the roadi took his feet out of the stirrup-irons, allowed his legs to dangle, placed both hands on the pummel of his saddle, and gave way to the most boisterous laughter that I had ever known him to indulge in.

K

My eyes filled with tears when I beheld this mirthful outbreak.

"Baxter"---he again gave way to laughter --- " Baxter, old Baxter---oh, Wetherby, you'll never believe it!"

"What is it, Jack? Do tell me."

"Old Baxter is going to be married to a very pretty little girl, only seventeen years old, a niece of the Major's wife! He was missing for two days, and then came out in that splendid dye in which you saw him! "

There is a shrub in India called Meendhi. It resembles the English myrtle. Hedges are made of it. The leaves of this shrub, when they are perfectly dry, are rubbed to powder. This powder is made into a paste, about the consistency of a mustard-plaster, or poultice. This paste is applied to the hair, whiskers, and eyebrows; and the patient sits or walks about with it upon his hair for five or six hours. In that time the hair becomes perfectly red. The paste is then rubbed off, and the red hair thoroughly cleansed. Another preparation is then applied, and in the course of five or six hours the hah becomes as black as ebony. Bear's grease gives it a gloss, which closes the process. The dye lasts for about" three weeks.

I was angry, though amused, that the old Colonel should have been such a fool as to disfigure himself, and think of marrying a person so much younger thanhim- self, but when I saw Fifeleigh convulsed, and roaring with laughter, I* could not join in his merriment.

"She is a larky girl," said Fifeleigh, "and she will

lead him a nice life. Mark my words, and it will serve him right, the old donkey! What can he want with a. young wife, I should like to know? "

"Ah, Jack!" said I, "marriage is a mistake alto gether. Women are a bad lot. There's no knowing what they will do. You and I were much better fellows, Jack, when we were bachelors. Wives are all very well sometimes, but they entail upon soldiers. great annoyance, vexation, and anxiety, generally speaking. There are few of us who like to own it, Jack, for fear our friends should laugh at us."

"Why, what's the matter, Cornet? Have you been having a row on the road? Married people in this country always wrangle when they are travelling."

"You have just guessed it. We have been quarrelling upon the road. Of course, this is between ourselves, Jack. I intend to send my wife home to live with her father."

"Nonsense, Cornet! you will do nothing of the kind. Women have a great deal to bear in this country, and we ought to make great allowance for their occasional ill-humours. Do as I do, Cornet! Whenever Mary Jane becomes rusty and out of sorts, I hold my tongue; shut myself up in a room, read a book, and wait until she's herself again."

"Give me some dinner to-night, Jack; I wish to tell you all that is upon my mind."

"All right, Cornet. But let us gallop to the lines, for I am rather late. Poor old Baxter!"

*

Fifeleigh and I dined together. We were alone.

The cloth was removed. I had told him " all the particulars" which he desired with reference to my " punishing " Wintie at billiards. Fifeleigh took out of his jacket-pocket a letter from his wife, Mary Jane, a letter which she had written only the night previous to her leaving Mussoorie with Wintie. He threw this letter across the table, and told me to read it. I obeyed him.

"My own dearest Jack, --- The weather is charming. I wish I could persuade you to come up here for a month, for I am very dull without you. You will be glad to hear that the Cornet has won enough to pay nearly all his debts from that miserable little wretch, Captain Wintie. Everybody here is delighted, and I think Sophy is not half so vexed at Robby's gambling as she pretends to be. What a shame of the Commander-in-chief to send Robby down to his regiment! A thousand thanks, my dear Hubby, for your long and affectionate letters. I often ciy over them, Jack, dearest. So poor Brill is to get a staff appointment at last! People say that the Seiks are sure to cross the river, and that our regiment will be ordered to march to Ferozepore without delay. I hope this is not true, for it would break my heart if you had to go to the wars. Ever your affectionate and faithful

"Mary Jane."

I folded up the letter, and returned it to Fifeleigh. He again reverted to Colonel Baxter's folly, and laughed immoderately.

It was now twelve o'clock.

"Fifeleigh," said I, "are you aware that there have been some differences between your wife and mine?"

"I was," he replied; "at least, Mary Jane hinted as much; but I hope they are not enemies."

"It was your wife's fault."

"That's your idea, I suppose."

"Yes; she was very imprudent."

"What did she do?"

"Why, she laughed and flirted, and made herself conspicuous."

"Pooh! She's a handsome woman, and fond of admiration; and she has high spirits; and she says a great many things that she does not mean; but there's no harm in her. I love to see her enjoying herself. I have too good an opinion of myself to be jealous, Cornet."

"Ah! but she went too far, Jack."

"What do you mean, Wetherby?"

"We have been friends for a very long time "

"I know we have; but what do you mean?"

"Why, that Mary Jane went too far."

"But how do you mean?" Fifeleigh's anger was now stamped upon his features. "Listen to me, Wetherby!" he continued. "We have been friends for a long time; but understand this --- that if my wife and yours quarrel, and if your wife chooses to quarrel with you, and make you unhappy, and you then think proper to come here and try to set me against my wife, and make me as miserable as yourself --- listen to me, Wetherby!" (he was now in a towering passion) I'll resent it, sir !"

"There is no virtue in womankind, Fifeleigh."

"You lie, sir; and if you repeat that sentiment, I'll put my fingers between your cravat and your throat. Explain yourself, Lieutenant Wetherby!"

Fifeleigh now became deadly pale; his lips quivered; he clenched his fist, and stared me full in the face.

I encountered his gaze steadily for a few moments, but at length I buried my face in the palms of my hands.

Fifeleigh became calmer. He placed his hand upon my shoulder, and said, tenderly, "Forgive me, Wetherby. I know you are my friend. Tell me, Robby---tell me, is it possible that I am dishonoured?"

At that moment a buggy was driven up to the door, and, to my intense satisfaction, Colonel Baxter and Major Green walked into the room.

"Colonel! Major!" cried Fifeleigh, taking a hand of each officer whom he addressed,---" Lieutenant Wetherby has driven me mad. He has insinuated that all I love and prize upon earth is worthless---that Mary Jane is false to me! If he cannot justify what he has said, I'll take his life. If he can, I'll take hers

No!" he added---"no; I would not hurt her, even if she were false to me. Wetherby, tell me the worst. Is there a shadow of proof against her?"

"You will never see her again," said I. " Ere this she has passed through Meerut with that miserable little wretch, Captain Wintie, of whom she spoke in her last letter to you. I saw her upon the road, and "

Fifeleigh sank into an easy chair, extended his long

legs, and closed his eyes. I fancied I could hear the • heating of his heart. Ere long he sprang up, called for brandy-and-water, helped himself, and invited us to follow his example.

Fifeleigh had a very fine voice, and he began to pour forth one of his favourite songs.

"And we are going to the wars, Colonel!" cried Fifeleigh. "The Seiks are going to cross the river! The Seiks, Colonel! The Seiks are crossing the river 1 "

The next day, when I paid Fifeleigh a visit, I found him packing up a variety of things in boxes and trunks.

"You see, Wetherby," said Fifeleigh, "that I am not a revengeful fellow, after all. These belonged to that poor unfortunate woman---poor Mary Jane! These are her boots and shoes, and these gowns are hers, and these silver dishes are hers; and this desk, Wetherby, and this writing-case, and these books, and these ornaments from the mantel-piece, and these small pictures, and this basket, and the wools, and this frame,---I thought of making a bonfire of them in the compound; but then it struck me that they might be of some use to her, poor creature! And see, Wetherby,---here is a short letter I have written to her. Read it, and if I have said anything wrong, point it out, and I will alter it."

The letter was this: ---

"Mary Jane,---I have sent to you all that I can find belonging to you in the bungalow. Do not acknow- ~r~ ledge the receipt of them. I will take it for granted that they will reach you by the bullock-train. If ever you are in real distress and friendless, let me know, and I will afford you pecuniary assistance. Do not write to me, but make known your wants through some friend in the regiment.

"John Fifeleigh."

"It will do very well, Jack," said I.

From out of the mass of things which were lying in the verandah, ready for packing, Fifeleigh selected a net, made of blue silk, in which Mary Jane used to bind her long brown hah'; an old pair of shoes, long worn as slippers, and a pair of black kid gloves. He tied these things up in a lawn pocket-handkerchief, which had Mary Jane's initials worked in the comer, and he carried them into his bed-room. Fifeleigh was absent for about a quarter of an hour. When he returned his eyes were swollen, and very red. He had evidently been weeping bitterly over these relics, which he desired to keep in memory of the most ardent love for a handsome woman that ever warmed the generous heart of a brave, high-minded man.

Colonel Baxter's nuptials! We---the whole regiment---turned out in full dress to witness their celebration. Even Mrs. Brill went to the expense of a white satin slip, and a bonnet trimmed with orange-blossoms for the occasion. (Brill had been appointed Brigademajor of the Division.) The bride was certainly a very pretty girl. I wished Mrs. Brill had stayed at home;

for her mind was always running on matters of business, and she made me laugh in the church, close to the altar, by saying seriously, in a whisper,---

"She 'll come nicely on the fund, Cornet, as a Colonel's widow, if anything happens to old Baxter. I wish the old woman's ghost could walk in just now, and see what was the use of her saving and pinching as she did. This young woman will spend it all, you know. I should like to catch Brill making such a fool of himself after I'm dead and gone. When I'm dying, I'll burn every bit of Company's paper, and then if Brill likes to many again, let him. It will be quite optional."

"Hush!" said I. " The parson is looking at you."

"Well, let him look, the pasty-faced man!" said Mrs. Brill. "I think he might have put on a clean what-you-may-call-it---surplus " (she meant surplice), "although it is a dirty business he is engaged in--- marrying an old painted man to a mere child. There were we pitying old Baxter not long ago, when the old lady died; and now you see there are all the cornets envying him. The world is full of hypocrisy and humbug. What can that young girl care about that old thing?"

"So long as we both shall live," said the clergyman, concluding the vow.

"I will," said the Colonel.

"I will!" echoed Mrs. Brill, in a loud whisper. "Why, his threescore-and-ten is up already---so that his promissory note is overdue before he makes it."

I could contain myself no longer. I tittered aloud. My wife, who was leaning on my arm, gave me a look expressive of extreme disgust; but it did not reduce me to gravity. On the contrary, it provoked me to titter loudly again.

" For richer and poorer." When the old Colonel came to these words, Mrs. Brill whispered to me, "He'll be poorer pretty soon, I warrant you.--- Give thee my troth! '* " she repeated after the Colonel. " Bring her on the fund, and give her a pension! I say, it's a fraud!"

"With this ring I thee wed," old Baxter feebly repeated after the clergyman.

"With this fiddlestick!'' whispered Mrs. Brill, carrying on her commentary loud enough for me to hear her. "I have no patience with an old man who paints his cheeks and dyes his hair, and comes to church clothed in such abominable falsehood."

"Yea, and thou shalt see thy children's children," said the minister.

"Children's children, indeed! Now, the very idea!" said Mrs. Brill.

"You had better leave the church, Robert," whispered my wife, "if you cannot behave better."

Mrs. Brill heard her, and replied, "He had better stay where he is. You wouldn't have him cry, would you?"

" Hush!" said I, in an agony of fear lest Mrs. Brill should come to words with my wife, and interrupt the ceremony.

" Spot or wrinkle, or any such thing." When the minister came to these words, Mrs. Brill was extremely indignant.

"Spot or wrinkle!" she repeated. "He has filled up all the wrinkles with white paint and putty! I could pick it out with a penknife!"

• *

My wife, when we came out of church, begged of me not to sit near Mrs. Brill at the breakfast. But of what avail was my promise, since Mrs. Brill was determined to sit next to me?

"Robert, there is room for you here," said my wife, when we were about to be seated, and she pointed to a vacant chair.

Mrs. Brill observed her look, and said, "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Wetherby. Although bolting, they say, is catching when it gets into a regiment, don't suppose I'd be so weak as to go off with the Cornet. Brill is on the staff."

Sophy was convulsed with laughter; and so was every one who heard Mrs. Brill's remark.

"Have you congratulated the Colonel?" I inquired of Mrs. Brill.

"No," said she; " and I don't intend. I am not an impostor and hypocrite, like some other ladies whom I could mention." (She looked at Sophy.) " I always speak my feelings. An honest man's the noblest work of God---and so's a woman."

I filled Mrs. Brill's glass several times with champagne, and the beverage appeared to improve her temper. I trod upon her toe by accident, and she looked blandly in my face, and said,---

"Don't flirt with me, Cornet, before your wife, or you 'll be making her unhappy, poor thing! and she's not a bad creature, though she looks a wretched dawdle, and has no more idea of housekeeping than a blackingbrush. Don't flirt with me here, Cornet. Brill, too, has got his bleary eyes on us."

The first Mrs. Baxter had been like a mother to all the juniors in the corps, and her successor, the second Mrs. Baxter, was disposed to be sisterly. She was clever as well as pretty, and made herself extremely popular with the regiment. But she was rather extravagant, and her hospitality must have consumed, monthly, something far exceeding her husband's pay and allowances, which amounted to fourteen hundred rupees. She was particularly attentive to my wife, and apparently very fond of our boy. Whether she loved the old Colonel or not was a matter I never had the curiosity to think much about; though Mrs. Wetherby protested, in opposition to Mrs. Brill's opinion, that the girl positively doated upon him.

The rumours that the Seiks intended to invade the British territories had been so often repeated, that we ceased to pay much attention to them; but one night an order came from head-quarters that the 12th Light Cavalry were to march immediately, and proceed to Loodianah. Almost every lady in the regiment wished to march with us; but that was, of course, out of the question; all were compelled to remain behind. They were, in common with the wives of officers belonging to several other regiments, placed under the care of poor Brill, who had to remain at the station and perform the duties of his office.*

• The author desires to inform the reader that he does not profess to give accurate details of matters connected with the first campaign against the Seiks. There are reasons why the

My wife behaved nobly up to the very last moment ---up to three o'clock on the morning that I was about to start with the regiment for the seat of a bloody war. But when I could stay no longer---when the servants in the verandah began to talk, and my charger to neigh, her courage failed her, and she sobbed so violently that my heart was breaking when I beheld her emotion. She went down upon her knees, and clinging to mine, implored me to forgive any hasty or unkind word that she had ever uttered to me. She said she was haunted with the idea that we should never meet again in this world; and, rising in a frenzy of affection, she threw her arms around my neck, and looked wildly into my eyes.

"Sophy," said I, tenderly, "do not unman me. If anything happens to me return to your father's home; and tell my mother that it was the last request of her son that she should protect and console his widow; and tell my father, if my regiment should run away, Sophy, that I was not amongst the fugitives."

Our discourse awakened the child, and the dear boy, fancying that we were quarrelling, applied to me several epithets of abuse, in Hindostanee. His mother took him in her arms, calmed his anger, hushed him to sleep, and then laid him on the bed. I did not apostrophise him in the words of Hector, but my prayers for the darling were not less fervent. Those prayers were scarcely ended when an orderly belonging to the troop which I commanded (we were short of captains) rode up author should, not be too precise in this narrative, which is, to all intents and purposes, a work of fiction, albeit every scene is sketched from real life.

to the door, and I heard him say to the ayah, Regiment koonch, gia! (The regiment has marched.) And the orderly's horse and my own began to neigh and fight, and beat the, earth with their fore-feet. My wife dashed the tears from her eyes, took the guard off her wedding-ring, placed it on my little finger, and said,---

"Robert, if you are killed, let your last sigh be for me and the boy, and let no other being in the world share it."

I leant over the child, kissed his forehead gently --- holding in my hands his little feet---and then bade farewell to his mother.

While I was mounting my horse, my servants, assembled in the verandah, prayed for my safety. I galloped along the road, followed by the orderly, and in an hour came up with the regiment, and took command of my troop. Fifeleigh, who was still acting-adjutant of the regiment, came and rode beside me.

"Well, Bobby," said he, "everything is for the bqst, as the philosopher Pangloss says. I have a fiendish satisfaction this morning. 1 have no wife, as many have, to hang about my neck, and wring my bosom at parting." And Fifeleigh drove his spurs into Iris charger's sides, and made him plunge and rear; and then he flogged the noble animal into quietude.

Fifeleigh of late had taken to drinking deeply, and when he spoke to me he was far from sober.

At breakfast Colonel Baxter looked very dismal; but he affected to enjoy the prospect of a campaign, and was eloquent, to a certain extent, on the topic of " full

batta and prize-moneyand Major Green, though he could scarcely sit a horse, from downright decrepitude, was plentiful in promises that he " would show the Seiks the sort of stuff we were made of." Fifeleigh expressed an opinion that the corps would " bolt," if Providence ever took it under fire; and I thought so too, in my heart, and was about to say so, when the Colonel informed Fifeleigh, very angrily, that if he dared again to asperse in his (Colonel Baxter's) presence the character of that branch of the service to which he (Fifeleigh) had the honour to belong, he (Colonel Baxter) would put him (Fifeleigh) under an arrest for disgraceful conduct, unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman.

At about two o'clock, p.m.---after I had written a letter to my wife --- I went into Fifeleigh's tent to give him a lecture on the impropriety of hard drinking. I found him fast asleep, and snoring loudly. He had not undressed, and his jacket was buttoned tightly up to his throat. It struck me that I ought to unbutton it, and make him comfortable. I did so---and found laid upon his breast, just over his heart, the net in which " Mary Jane" used to bind up her hair---ay, and her old shoes were there! and from the pocket of his jacket her handkerchief was peeping out; and I could see the finger of a black kid glove. His sword, cap, and gauntlets, were lying on the table, and beside them was a brandy bottle, a pewter tumbler, and a cheroot-case. It was a melancholy spectacle, that tent of poor Jack Fifeleigh's!

• ^4 & iJC

Umballah, stript of its troops, was an unsafe resi deuce for unprotected ladies, and they moved in a body to Meerut; but the troops from that station being now on their march to the frontier, Meerut, in point of safety, became very little better than Umballah. My wife and Mrs. Baxter took a small house between them in the Lancer Lines; and the latter, who was very timid, employed an unusual quantity of watchmen to guard the premises; so that Mrs. Wetherby and Mrs. Baxter were comparatively safe. But this was not the case with other ladies. A gang of armed thieves, in the dead of night, entered a bungalow adjoining that in which Mrs. Baxter and my wife were living. They tied a lady and her daughter together, and threatened to kill them if they gave an alarm (they had previously cut down and killed a man-servant and a woman-servant); they then carried off everything of any value; even the cooking utensils were not spared. On the following night another bungalow (in which were living a lady and three children) was forcibly entered and rifled of its contents. In this instance they carried away even the bedding on which the lady and her children were sleeping. Every night some house or other was robbed; and the police seemed powerless to check the career of these armed and desperate thieves. It was more than probable that they shared the plunder. We, with the force hurrying to the war, were just as anxious about our families as they were about us. At that time it would have been difficult to say which " party" was in most danger---the husbands or the wives.

In one of her letters Mrs. Wetherby mentioned to me that she slept with a pair of loaded pistols under her

pillow. This terrified me more than anything else. I feared that the child, who never could help meddling with dangerous weapons, would find them out, and make playthings of them, while his mother was asleep. I must relate an anecdote touching the Colonel.

A young cornet, who had joined the regiment only a few days before we marched, and had never seen the Colonel except in very black hair, said to me one morning, in confidence,---

"Wetherby, do you think our Colonel funks?"

"No," I replied. "Do you?"

"Yes, I do," said he. "Have you not observed that within the last fortnight he has grown as grey as a badger? Why, he looks twenty years older!"

It was impossible to stifle my laughter, there was something so very serious about the cornet's face when he expressed his doubts of the Colonel's courage.

The Colonel had not been able to dye on the line of march. Art was fading, and nature enjoying a delicious triumph; and in another week his locks, eyebrows, and moustache were as white as the driven snow.

Colonel Baxter was, as I have already stated, a good-natured, kind-hearted old gentleman, and far from deficient in personal courage; and on a parade-ground he was quite equal to his duties; but he was totally unfit to command a regiment on active service. To see the old Colonel, with his spectacles on, reading an order from the Commander-in-Chief, was ludicrous in the extreme. Frightened at the extent of his responsibility, and at the chance of incurring censure by

L making a mistake, his hands trembled, his knees knocked one against the other, and his head shook like the head of a man afflicted with the palsy. He could do nothing without first consulting Major Green, who was very little better, in point of efficiency, than the Colonel himself. Neither had the bodily strength, the mental vigour, or the clearness of head to inspire confidence in a large body of naturally hare-hearted natives, dressed like dragoons. Men of Fifeleigh's stamp ought to have commanded our regiments of regular cavalry.

If the irregular cavalry behave better in the field than the regular cavalry, it is because they are commanded by such men as Mayne, Becher, Sam Fisher, Trevor Wheler, the Chamberlains (Crawford and Neville), Robbins, and John Jacob --- men of tried valour and vigour, dash and daring---men who are respected by their troopers for their judgment and their personal prowess. As far as the materials are concerned, the men of the regular and irregular cavalry- are equal---I was about to say " in bravery"--- but I cannot use the word conscientiously; for I believe that out of every hundred native soldiers --- cavalry and infantry---in the presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal---not more than ten really gallant fellows could be selected.

But infirm and unfit as was Colonel Baxter, there were officers commanding brigades who were even more decrepit and confused. There were more than one who required the assistance of a chair and a couple of troopers to get them into their saddles! What would

I not have given, on the night of the 17th of December, 1845, if I could have made an exchange out of my regiment with even a private of the glorious 3d Dragoons!

"Wetherby!" called out a well-known voice at the door of my tent. " Wetherby---get up. I want to speak to you 1 "

11 was an officer on the staff of the Governor-general who thus disturbed me. I got up, lighted a candle, and let him in.

"Have you had any news from Meerut to-day?" inquired my friend.

"Not a word," I replied,

"Well, I suppose you will hear to-morrow what [has]{.underline} just come to me in a letter from a lady."

"What is it?"

"Something your wife has done."

"Good heaven! What is it? Do speak. She has not run away --- has she?"

"Oh, dear no. She has only been using a pistol."

"And shot herself or the child, or her chum? I implored her to put away those pistols."

"Oh, dear no. The mother, child, and chum, are doing well, and the man's life, too, has been saved."

"The man's life? My dear fellow, tell me quickly what has happened?"

"Why, simply this. The chokeedar (watchman) fancied he heard a noise in Mrs. Wetherby's room, and lifted up the jilmill (Venetian), and looked in to satisfy himself that all was right. Your wife was in bed. She heard the jillmill lifted, and saw an eye peeping through

it. She called out, ' Who's there?' The chokeedar not answering immediately, she seized a pistol from under her pillow, cocked it, took what she imagined to be an aim at the chokeedar's head, and "

"Shot the man, I suppose?"

"Nothing of the kind, my dear Wetherhy! The bullet smashed the looking-glass, which stood upon her toilet-table in a corner of the room. You had better write to her about those pistols, or she and Mrs. Baxter will be shooting themselves, or one another. They practise every day at a target, and the balls frequently fly over the wall and drop in their neighbour's garden, and sometimes in the public road."

I was both vexed and amused---vexed that Sophy had been so disobedient; amused that her " practice every day" at pistol-shooting had not made her aim deadly to any nocturnal intruder.

The next day's post brought me the following letter:---

"Dear Robby,---The child is quite well, so am I. There is not the least danger of our bungalow being attacked now. The thieves have a wholesome dread of us. But I am afraid we shall not have any luck for the next seven years, for I have unfortunately broken a looking-glass. I have put away those pistols: you told me to do so.

"You will be sorry to hear that an accident has happened to dear little Mrs. Baxter, but do not mention it to the Colonel. You know, if you put some gunpowder in a saucer, and then mix some water with it,

and make it into a sort of paste, and shape it like a little pyramid, and then touch it on the top with a lighted match, it phizzes and spurts for about three or four minutes. Well, I brought out your powder-flask and a saucer, and Mrs. B. took the water-cup out of the Minah's cage, and made one of these things. But she did not put enough water, and the consequence was, when she lighted it, it went off all of a sudden, and every morsel of her eyebrows and eyelashes is singed off, and her neck and chin very much burnt. Poor dear! you cannot think what a figure she looks; fortunately her curls were twisted at the back of her head, or they would have taken fire, and that would have been a pretty business.

"Dear Robert, why do you tell me stories? Why do you write to me that the Seiks will lay down their arms, and that the army will return to quarters next month? Remember, that there are other ladies here' who have husbands with the camp, and they tell their wives a very different tale. They say that the general opinion is, that the Seiks number 120,000 men, and that they will cut our army up, overrun India, and make all the Europeans slaves and servants! However, I forgive you, Robby, for I know your motive was a good one in putting the brightest face on affairs. I have had a letter from my father. He says Major Wetherby is still very inveterate. He was offered a baronetcy if he would allow a gentleman who is about to be made a peer to take the title of Upwood. Upwood in former years belonged to this gentleman's family. Your father declined to take a title, because he said it would descend to a reprobate son, of low tastes, who, in opposition to his wishes, had married the daughter of a notorious black-leg; but he said he had not the least objection to any person taking the title of ' Upwood.'

"Papa also says that your father is cutting down all the timber on the estate, and selling it to make a fund for that odious Charles. I wish this dear brat of ours, who is at present very busy in cutting up a wounded wasp with my nail-scissors, would not grow so like that Charles and your mother, Papa wrote to your father to say he had no right to cut down the timber, and your father replied, ' If you will come on my premises and tell me that, I'll cut you down.'

"It is said that Mrs. Fifeleigh has quarrelled with Captain Wintie; that she gave him a dreadful beating with a hair-brush, and then placed herself under the protection of an assistant-surgeon at Gwalior. God bless you, Robby.

^u^ Ever your affectionate

"Sophy."

Chapter V.

*

The battles of Moodkee and Ferozeshah have been described in official despatches, and, therefore, so far as relates to the generalship, or the fighting part of the business, it is unnecessary for me to trouble the reader.

Moodkee was an awful scene, but nothing in comparison with that which soon followed. At Ferozeshah, on that night when the Seiks kept up an incessant fire upon us, I went in search of John Fifeleigh, who had fallen from his saddle, severely wounded. Presently, I heard my name feebly pronounced by an officer who was sitting on the ground. I approached him. It was the same person who had brought me the news of my wife's exploit with the pistol. This officer and myself were very much attached to each other. Our acquaintance had commenced when I was A.D.C. to Mrs. Manson. "Are you wounded?" I inquired, for he did not groah; and, though his voice was feeble, he did not speak as men usually speak when they are in great pain.

"Wounded! my dear Wetherby?" he replied. "Why, I have a chest full of bullets. Did you ever see such a fire as it was? How dreadfully cold it is,

Wetherby!" and he shivered, and rubbed his hands together.

"Take my cloak," said I.

"No, my dear fellow, I will not rob you," he returned. "It will be all over with me soon. A thousand thanks, Wetherby, but keep your cloak."

"You must take my cloak," said I, wrapping it round his shoulders. While doing this, I beheld his coat pierced in several places, but from only one bullethole was the blood issuing.

"Do you think you could contrive to make a little fire, Wetherby? I am still so very cold," and again he shivered.

"Of course," said I; and collected some sticks and a furze-bush, and, having the means of striking a light in my pocket, I set fire to them.

"A thousand thanks, dear Wetherby," said the wounded man. "Is the G. G. (Governor-general) all right?"

"Upon my life, I don't know," said I. " I have not the slightest idea of who is killed, wounded, or saved. I believe nobody knows anything of his neighbour's condition. But the Chief is unhurt, for I heard him, not long ago, talking to the men of one of the Queen's regiments of foot."

"What regiment, Wetherby?" he inquired.

"That I do not know even; but it was some corps that the Chief had seen under fire in the Peninsula; for I heard him allude to Albuera."

"It was the old 29th, probably."

At that moment two men on horseback came up.

They halted close to the little fire I had made. One of them called out, "Who's that?"

I knew the voice. It was that of a man who was a great friend of mine. I mentioned that I was looking for Fifeleigh.

"You will find him," said my friend, "about a hundred yards from this, mortally wounded. But I would advise you not to go near him, for you can do him no sort of good, and he won't allow you to touch him or remove him. He is lying in a line with one of the enemy's guns, and the grape and round shot are flying about him in all directions."

"Whereabouts is he?" I inquired.

"Stop a moment, and I'll show you," said my friend; and he waited for the flash of a heavy gun which was being fired from one of the Seik batteries. "There! he is lying within range of that. About a hundred yards from this; to the left of us."

I crawled upon my hands and knees as soon as I felt that I was within the gun's range---the round shot " pinging," " ping!" " ping!" past me, as I proceeded. I came upon several bodies---black and white---and looked in their faces, but I could see nothing of Fifeleigh. I placed my ear close to the earth, listened, and heard the groans of a man not far distant. I went up to him, and found, not Fifeleigh, but another officer whom I knew, a gallant fellow, who was just breathing his last. Kneeling by his side, I spoke to him; but he could give me no answer, although I could see that he recognised me. I left him, and resumed my search, and shortly after I discovered Fifeleigh, lying with his head upon his right arm.

"Jack," said I, taking his hand in mine, "what is the matter?"

"What! Bobby!" said Fifeleigh.

"Let me move you, Jack; there's a safe place, out of fire, not far from this."

"Then that's the place I do not wish to go to. Get out of this, Cornet; don't you hear the shot coming over us?"

"Can I do anything for you, Jack?"

"Nothing, my dear fellow: I am past cure. Leave me, and let me talk to the stars about dear Mary Jane. Oh, how I loved that woman, Wetherby! These wounds are nothing to other wounds that the eye cannot see."

"Where are you hit, Jack?"

"Oh, man, a round shot has broken my ribs and tom away my side, and my right thigh is broken. Don't touch me."

Suddenly Fifeleigh seized my hands, and held them tightly. He attempted to rise, and screamed with the spasmodic pain he was suffering. I then saw his wound. How he survived a moment after receiving it was a perfect miracle. Literally, his right side was carried away. He still grasped my hands, gave another shriek, and relinquished his hold of me. It was all over. Poor Jack Fifeleigh was a corpse! I placed my hand over his heart, to feel if it were still throbbing, and there were Mary Jane's old shoes, and the net in which

she used to bind her hair; and her kerchief and gloves. I left Fifeleigh as soon as he was dead, and crawled back to the ground where my corps was bivouacking, threading my way through the dead and the dying, and feeling that since it was impossible to render assistance to all, it was not cruel in me to neglect a few, and think solely of my own safety.

When the letters came into camp, I was sadly vexed that my wife had not written to me. Everybody appeared to have a letter except myself, and when I went to the post-office at Ferozepore, and saw that awful heap of correspondence, amongst which were hundreds of letters addressed to those whose eyes were closed for ever, I was extremely annoyed to think that Sophy had been so very inconsiderate. I had been unable to write to her, but surely she might have written to me? Another day passed, and no letter for me; and none to the address of Colonel Baxter or Major Green. They, too, were very angry with their wives, and said, as I did,. that they " could not understand it." It was not until the " Delhi Gazette " came to hand that I became acquainted with the cause of v'hat I considered " Sophy's strange conduct." I read in the " Gazette" the following paragraph:---"We regret to observe, amongst the returns of the killed and wounded, the name of Lieutenant Robert Wetherby, of the 12th Light Cavalry. This promising young officer, on the night of the 21st, went in quest of a friend who was desperately wounded, and, unfortunately, getting amongst some stragglers of the Seik cavalry, he was cut to pieces."

While I was reading this paragraph, my wife, at Meerut, was raving mad, and Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Green were, in consequence, unable to write to their husbands. Mourning was being made up in the verandah of the house in the Lancer Lines, and Mrs. Ludlam, the milliner, had received instructions for widow's caps for Mrs. Wetberby.

I was in such a state of mind when I saw the announcement of my death, for I knew full well how my wife would be affected, that I was unable to write to her that day; but I got the Colonel and the Major to write to their wives, and say that on the following day my wife would hear from me --- that I was not even wounded, much less killed.

When this was communicated to Sophy, she would not believe it. She fancied it was a story made up for the purpose of deceiving her, and allaying her grief for a while. Nor was she quite satisfied, even when she •saw my handwriting, that I was still living. Not until she had received a second and a third letter from me could she be prevailed upon to address me.

The inaccuracy of the official returns of killed and wounded led to some serious but amusing incidents amongst the wives of the private soldiers belonging to her Majesty's regiments. Soldiers' widows in India marry very shortly after the death of their husbands. If they do not marry, they are not allowed to remain in barracks. I have known of a woman who saw her husband, John Sullivan, buried on Monday afternoon, and on the Friday following she became the lawful wife of Patrick Murphy, belonging to the same company. The

wives of the --- regiment of foot were with the depot in Meerut, and four men of the regiment, who were only badly wounded, were returned " killed." The widows of these four men married immediately; one took a private in the Artillery, one a private in the Lancers, and the remaining two became the wives of Sappers and Miners.

The badly-wounded men recovered; and this led to a very pretty dispute. There was bigamy, and yet it was not bigamy. One of the Sappers said he would not give the wife up; and she declared that as she liked the second lawful husband better than the first, she was determined to stay where she was, and that if her first husband was not dead, after being in the return, why he ought to be, and she'd' say no more about it. The other wounded men did not want their wives, they said, and, since they had married again, they might make the best of it. But then the new husbands did not want them now, and gave as a reason that they were " mistaken in them," and had " had enough of them." How these differences were reconciled, I know not; but I have understood that when the 24th Foot was so frightfully cut up at Chil- lianwallah, the number of mistakes, precisely similar to those above mentioned, was something awful.

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After the battle of Ferozeshah, all officers holding staff appointments,

in various parts of India, were ordered to join their regiments without

delay. Some travelled from Calcutta, some from Mhow, some from

Hazareebaugh, Dinapore, Nusseerabad, &c. &c. A ladyfriend of mine saw

the parting between Brill and his wife, and, knowing the lively interest

I always took in Mrs. Brill's sayings and doings, she gave me a

particular account of them. That account was, in substance, this

---Brill's palankeen was " packed," and the bearers were loitering about the door, ready to take it up. Mrs. Brill had given him a beefsteak for his dinner that day, and she had allowed him an extra bottle of beer, which she shared with him.

"Brill," said she, "recollect, you ought to be a man of sense. It's all very well for Fifeleigh and Robert Wetherby, and those poor regimental-dutydoing devils, to run their heads into danger, but your life is worth 1000 rupees a-month, and you ought to know how to take care of it. We have no family, it is true; but you have a wife, and should respect her feelings."

"Yes, my dear," said Brill.

"Well, then," continued she, "keep out of danger. If your troop wishes to charge into a safe place, let 'em. You don't want brevet rank, or any of that nonsense, I hope. Make as much bluster and row as you like, but, whatever you do, keep out of harm's way. And, for heaven's sake! don't go near that man Wetherby, if you can help it. He always was, and ever will be, a regular imp of mischief. If you should be put into the same squadron with him, sham rheumatism, and go on the sick list. There's nothing the Cornet would more delight in than seeing you knocked over by a cannon-shot, and getting a step by you. You are now the only man between him and his troop,

*

159 since poor Fifeleigh and Croker are gone. Anil don't let him lead you into drinking brandy-and-water and playing cards. You need not write to me every day, but every third or fourth day, for the postage on letters is serious. I won't send you the newspaper, because you can borrow it from Major Green, you know, and see all that is going on, without paying for it. If you should happen to kill any Seiks, search 'em, and pull down their back hah': that's where they carry their money and jewels, and valuable things. A seijeant of the 3d Dragoons, like a good husband, has sent his wife down a lot of gold mohurs and some precious stones, which he found tied up in the hair of a Seik officer. And, by-the-bye, Brill, you may as well leave me your watch. You can always learn the time of day from somebody, and if anything happened to you, it would be sold by the Committee of Adjustment, when it. would fetch a mere nothing."

A PRUDENT WIFE.

Brill, away from the pernicious influence of his hideous wife---removed from her thraldom---was himself again. When he joined his regiment, he was as frisky as a fawn, and like a boy who had got home for the holidays. So far from attending to his wife's injunctions, he disobeyed them in every particular. He was not easy till I got up loo parties in my tent; and as for brandy-and-water and cigars, he drank and smoked more than any of us. Whenever he took too much, I used to sober him by threatening to write to Mrs. Brill, and inform her of his habits. Brill would grow deadly pale, and acknowledge that the very idea of such a thing made him shudder.

"My dear Cornet," Brill would say, "I would rather face the whole Seik army single-handed than that woman, if she ever heard how I am going on. It would be something fearful!"

But, alas, for poor Brill! a few days before the battle of Sobraon, he must needs eat some unripe oranges which were brought into camp, and he was seized with cholera, which killed him. This made me the senior lieutenant in my regiment, and the luckiest fellow of my age in that branch of the service. All that I now required was, that one of our captains would go out, and promote me to the higher grade. Sobraon did it; and there was I, Captain Wetherby!

We crossed the river Sutledge, and proceeded to Lahore. Treaties were made, Kashmere given to Goolab Singh, and the army, early in March, was broken up. The 12th Light Cavalry was ordered to remain at Loodianah, and thither the ladies of the regiment were about to repair from Meerut. I obtained leave, and went to Umballah, to meet my wife. When I arrived there, she was not at the Dak Bungalow, and I went to pay a visit to Mrs. Brill, whom I found in deep mourning---the identical mourning which had been made up for Mrs. Wetherby; for Mrs. Brill had, on hearing of Brill's death, written to my wife, and asked her if she was disposed to sell the mourning, observing that it would be unlucky to keep it, and that if anything really did happen to me during the campaign, she could soon get other mourning made up in Meerut. Sophy was only too glad to part with the dresses and the caps, and begged Mrs. Brill to accept them, which she did most cheerfully-

I had heard it positively stated that Brill had died largely in debt to the Agra Bank, but that his life insurances, which the Bank kept up at Brill's expense, would cover the amount, and save his sureties from liability. When I put the question to Mrs. Brill, "How came Brill to be in debt to the Agra Bank?" she replied,---

"Well, you see, Cornet, I was always a very far-seeing woman. It is true that we were very saving people, and had no occasion to borrow; but then, you see, I got hold of the money borrowed from the Bank, and invested it in Bank shares, which gave me dividends of 12 per cent. Brill had to pay 10 per cent for the loan, and 2 per cent for the insurance; so that the dividends were left to accumulate, and the instalments due on the loan I paid out of our allowances. As Brill died, the life insurance office had to pay the Bank the balance due. Don't you see, Cornet?"

"How much was the balance?" I inquired.

"About four thousand five hundred rupees (450Z.) How stupid of Brill to eat green fruit! If he had been killed in battle I should have had a better pension than I now have. And what a bore that he was not a captain at the time! Well, God's will be done! --- I ought not to complain, perhaps," said she.

"We have erected a very handsome monument to Brill," said I, "in the church at Ferozepore."

"Well, and it is no more than you ought," she replied. "To how many monuments did Brill subscribe in his life, poor fellow? Why, there is not a churchyard in any cavalry station in these provinces that hasn't

M

got some of Brill's money buried in it; and the idea of the regiment grudging Brill a paltry tomb-stone! Well, I always said it---that military men are the meanest race on the face of the earth."

"We did not grudge it, I assure you," said I.

"Then why did you talk about it in the way you did, wounding my feelings?" And having''waited until she found her pocket-handkerchief, Mrs. Brill sat down, and began to cry bitterly.

"Don't cry, old girl," said I, tenderly.

"I am neither old, nor a girl," said Mrs. Brill; " and I beg you will not apply to me any opprobrious epithets."

"I would not offend you for the world," said I.

"Then there's my hand," said Mrs. Brill. And rapidly turning the conversation, she remarked, "This dress was a regular take-in, after all, as your wife would have found out if she had had to wear it. It's getting quite rusty already."

"I am sorry for that," said I.

I was longing for Mrs. Brill to invite us to stay a day or two with her, for my wife had a horror of staging bungalows, they were usually so filthy and so noisy.

"I expect Sophy at Umballah this evening," said I.

"Do you?" said Mrs. Brill.

"Yes," said I. " I have come down here to meet her."

"Have you?" said Mrs. Brill.

"Yes; and the bungalow is as full as it can hold," said I.

"Is it?" said Mrs. Brill.

RATHER ARTFUL BUT SUCCESSFULL.

"And I don't know a soul in this station now," said I.

163

"Don't you?" said Mrs. Brill.

"Why do you wear those caps?"

"Because it's the custom."

"Hiding all that beautiful hair of yours."

Mrs. Brill was very proud of her hair. She took off her cap, laid it down upon the table, smoothed her head with her skinny hands, arranged her dress becomingly, crossed her arms, looked at me, and said, "There, does that satisfy you?"

"What beautiful eyes you have!" said I.

"I know that," said Mrs. Brill. "Is there anything else you admire?"

"Yes; your pretty nose, and your delicate little teeth. I suspect you will not be a widow long."

"Perhaps not. I've had two offers already; but both men are in debt, I fear."

"You will get lots of good offers, no doubt."

"If you were a single man, w'ould you marry me, Cornet?"

"Of course I would!"

"I always fancied you had a great regard for me."

"And you were quite right in thinking so."

"And that's why Mrs. Wetherby always was so jealous of me."

"And is it not very natural?"

"Well, perhaps it is." And Mrs. Brill placed her hand on my shoulder, and said, "Never mind; it can't be helped." And she sighed.

I was a little alarmed, and, rising from my chair, I said,---

"Well, good-bye. I am afraid my wife has arrived by this time; and I must be off to the Dak Bungalow."

"Oh, bring her here," said Mrs. Brill. "I will try and make room for you."

I thanked her very much, and went down to the Bungalow to wait for Sophy's coming. I did not like to remain any longer alone with Mrs. Brill. She was so very thirsty for compliments, and it was really painful to pay them, except before a large party, when I did not care to what extent I indulged her.

I sat upon the steps of the entrance-door of the Dak Bungalow, looking at my watch, and counting the seconds; and in the course of an hour I observed no less than five palankeens approaching. One was considerably in advance of the rest. I saw an ayah and a child in it. It was my child. I rushed to seize him, and to my intense joy the child recognised me, glued his little arms round my neck, called me " papa," and kissed me. In another minute, my wife was clinging to me, weeping with delight. The child fancied his mother's tears were caused by some unkindness on my part, and, unwinding his arms from around my neck, he struck me in the face, and called me names in Hindos- tanee which I cannot translate. There is no abuse so horrible as that which children learn from native servants. The other palankeens were those of Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Green. The latter kissed me, and cried---

"Dear Bobby, only fancy you a Captain

My wife continued weeping, and " young Wetherby" continued his abuse, and pulled my hair so violently that the tears ran down my cheeks, notwithstanding his volubility made me laugh heartily, while I hugged him to my breast.

. The Dak Bungalow was unable to afford us all accommodation; and I told the ladies that I had, by flattery, opened the doors of Mrs. Brill's heart and bungalow, and that we might safely take her by storm.

Mrs. Brill, although she was constantly boasting that she was neither a hypocrite nor a humbug, when she beheld the Colonel's wife, would have satisfied me (if she had not often previously done so) that she was vastly proficient in the art; for she pretended to go into hysterics, and feigned a belief that Mrs. Green was " dear Brilland she apostrophised the Major's wife, and assumed her part far better than I had ever before seen it assumed by any woman acting the throes of that truly interesting complaint. I endeavoured, and succeeded in " bringing her to," and restoring her to reason, by suggesting that the only thing in such cases was to cut off the hair and pass a needle between the flesh and the quick of the left thumb-nail.

"Oh!" groaned Mrs. Brill, opening her eyes, "I'll be better presently."

And Mrs. Brill was better, "presently for she got up and ordered dinner; and, to my intense disgust, she arranged that Mrs. Baxter, Mrs. Green, and Mrs. Wetherby, should all sleep in her large bed, and that the child and myself should sleep on a stretcher in the dining-room.

When it became late, and Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Green had retired, I did all in my power to prevail upon Mrs. Brill to go to bed. But neither flattery nor remonstrance had then the faintest power over her. And my wife, who was very tired after her journey, notwithstanding she longed to talk to me, was at last compelled to bid me good night. At about two o'clock in the morning, when no one was stirring in the bungalow, Mrs. Wetherby, who was very anxious about the boy (for he had taken cold, and had a slight cough) lighted a candle, and was coining into the room where I was lying awake, playing with my sleeping boy's feet; but Mrs. Brill, who had made up a bed for herself in the passage, close to the dining-room door, rose up, and said to her,---

"Don't disturb them. The Cornet and the child are both fast asleep. They are very comfortable. Go to bed, Mrs. Wetherby."

I heard this, and in my heart I was wicked enough to w'ish that dacoits (thieves) would attack the house and murder the hostess. And Sophy, whose gentle nature was now changed to something like that of the tigress, went back, blew out the light, and was forced to listen to Mrs. Green and Mrs. Baxter snoring in concert on either side of her. How Sophy could have been so foolish as to travel with such a large party was a matter that provoked, nay, maddened me. But then she had no idea of my coming to Umballah to meet her, for I wished to take her by surprise, and had not informed her of my intentions; and she was, perhaps, quite right in making arrangements to travel with her friends.

The paragraph touching my death in the Delhi newspaper had been copied into the Bombay papers, and had found its way to England; and when we arrived at Loodianah there were two letters to the address of Mrs. Wetherby. These letters were in black-bordered envelopes, and had been forwarded from Meerut to the station where the corps was then quartered. One was from my mother. The other was from Mr. Revelle. "They mourned me dead in my father's halls;''and my wife was implored to return with her boy to England immediately. They sent her 4002.! My family had gone into mourning, and so had Mr. Revelle; and my father, who was a good deal " cut up " on reading the account of my death, had, on observing Mr. Revelle in church, dressed in black, approached him after the service was over, and proffered his hand, which Mr. Revelle took, and shook warmly. In their mutual grief for me all their individual animosities had been smothered and forgotten. Their feelings of hatred were like rotten sticks in a whirlpool, striving to get to the surface, but kept beneath it by the force of the eddy. The next mail, of course, undeceived them.

It was, perhaps, very cruel in Sophy and myself to laugh; but we really could not help doing so---especially when we saw our child in a state of nature, tearing up the black-bordered envelopes, and sticking the pieces against the walls of the bed-room.

Decko, papa, mamma! (the little urchin called out to us.) Bahoot khoobsoorut hai? yu nahai? (Look, papa and mamma! Is that very handsome? or is it not?)

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"Oh, very handsome!" we both replied simultaneously, and then resumed our immoderate laughter. But ere long we were thrown into a state of great alarm. The child, while we were talking, had, unobserved, taken to chew a piece of his grandmother's epistle, and it had slipped into his throat and stuck there. He became black in the face, and was struggling hard for his life when Sophy first caught sight of him in that condition. She rushed to the boy, caught him in her arms, placed him on her knees, put her forefinger down his throat, and hooked up the half-masticated mass. I began to reproach her, now that the child was safe, with carelessness, and she, in turn, charged me with that very identical offence. The child having by this time " come to," and hearing us quarrelling, began, as was his wont, to swear at me; and, in spite of ourselves, Sophy and I again burst out laughing, and made friends.

One evening, on the 21st of May, Mrs. Wetherby and myself were sitting out in the front of our bungalow. I was smoking a cheroot, and my wife fanning herself, and pronouncing the heat to be suffocating. It was very warm, certainly; the thermometer at that time standing at 102° in the coldest part of the house. A private soldier, of her Majesty's 50th Regiment of Foot, came up and begged to see his wife, whom we had engaged to look after the child, and talk English, or rather Irish, to him. The soldier's wife had gone out in the palankeen carriage to give the child an " airing " --- by passing him through the hot and dusty atmo-

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sphere. I asked the soldier to remain until his wife returned, and meanwhile I began to talk to him about the campaign.

"Faith, it was all you say, Captain, a very bloody business, indeed; and did not the brunt of it fall on the old 50th---the dirty half-hundred, as they call us?"

"You certainly did behave nobly," said I. "The 50th was always a very distinguished regiment.''

"When the shot came so thick upon us that it was impossible to advance for a few minutes, there we stood, Captain, for all the world like a brick wall, and received their bullets and grape without a stagger or a reel, and then on we went with a cheer. But if any proof is wanting of the deeds of the 50th, let anybody now look at us. We went to the war nine hundred strong---nine hundred bright bayonets; and we came out of it with barely sufficient to complete three companies! There's slaughter for you, Captain! A prettier butcher's bill could not be presented, at least not for one regiment. But we shall get recruited soon, I suppose, sir; and there's enough of the old blood left in the regiment to inoculate the new hands with a knowledge of what a soldier's duty is, in the field and in quarters."

Mrs. Grady, the soldier's wife, having returned, her husband went to speak to her; and then, after saluting me and Sophy, he took his departure.

"If you please, ma'am," said Mrs. Grady, when she had given the child his tea, "my husband wishes me to go up to the barracks this evening, and join a little paity."

"Oh, of course, Mrs. Grady," said Sophy; " and I hope you will enjoy yourself."

Mrs. Grady made a low curtsey and retired. She put on her bonnet, and started for the 50th lines. About half-an-hour after she had left us, a dust-storm came on --- such a dust-storm as I had never seen before. Well might my wife say, "Robert, is the world coming to an end?"

It became pitch-dark, and the wind blew with such violence that the bungalow was rocked like a cradle. Then came a hurricane, and the lofty roof, made of thatch, was carried bodily from our abode, for we had not fastened the doors, and they were blown open. We seized the child, rushed into the garden, and threw ourselves on the ground. It would have been impossible to stand. The fruit-trees were all blown down, and we heard screams issuing from the stables, which had given way and fallen in upon my horses, killing one of them, and severely injuring two others. Miraculously, two syces (grooms), and their wives and children, were spared, but it was no easy matter to rescue them. A heavy shower of rain and hail succeeded the humcane, and we were drenched to the skin. And never shall I forget the vivid lightning that played around us, and the rolling thunder that drowned our voices with its roaring. The storm lasted for about an hour, and then the stars came out, and all was calm, and the face of heaven fairer than ever I had beheld it in India. I earned my child, followed by my wife, to the bungalow of a brother-officer, and returned to our own roofless abode to procure dry clothes. Scarcely had we changed

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our garments, and thanked God that we were safe, when an officer of our regiment galloped up to my friend's house, alighted, ran in, and inquired, "Have you heard the news? ''

"No---what is it?" we all cried out.

"Why, the barracks of the 50th have fallen in, and the whole regiment is buried in the ruins!"

Sophy and my friend's wife uttered a piercing shriek; and we, the officers of the 12th Light Cavalry, ran to the barracks to render assistance. How shall I describe what I saw? The reader must conjecture a barrack blown down, and dust issuing like smoke from the mass of rotten timber and badly-built walls, which had been made of unbaked bricks to save expense! The Company's finances were not flourishing when those barracks were constructed, and although they had been reported unsound, the military board had not sanctioned the abandonment. Beneath that smoking mass were two hundred and fifty human beings---men, women, and children---all that remained to represent the glorious 50th Foot. Beneath that smoking mass were the men who had escaped the carnage of Moodkee, Feroze- shah, Aleewal, and Sobraon. During the whole of that night were all the officers in the station, with Colonel Salter at their head, hard at work in extricating the dead and the survivors. Next morning I counted fifty-one men, fourteen women, and twenty children killed! One hundred and twenty-six men, four women, and five children, were carried away wounded, some to the hospital, and others to the bungalows of officers in the station. Poor Grady and his wife were amongst the dead; but their only child, a little girl of about six years of age, was saved. With my own hands I carried her, quite insensible, from the spot where I found her.

My wife was beginning to look " aged," and I thought it would be as well to apply for my furlough, and go home for a couple of years. My arrangements were all complete, and I was about to leave Loodianah, when I received a letter from the secretary of the bank, calling on me for payment of the balance due on the loans granted to the officers for whom I was a security. I was required to pay 3750 rupees (375?.) To obtain this sum detained me for several months longer in India. My luck, however, had taken a decided turn for the better, and I did not grumble much, though I confess that the payment of this money gave me more annoyance than all the pecuniary difficulties I had gone through. A man's wife feels privileged to twit him with his " folly" when he is called upon as a " security" to make good the default of a principal; and Sophy, though I considered her no ordinary mortal, was not totally dissimilar from the rest of her sex.

"Oh dear!" she would sometimes sigh, "that 375Z. would have covered the whole of our expenses to England! But it cannot be helped, I suppose."

"Then why talk about it?" I would inquire, very angry with myself and with her, and with the bank, and with the principals, and with the army at large, and with all the world.

When we arrived in Calcutta, I was sorry to find

that Manson had again failed. I had promised Sophy that I would not call upon Mrs. Manson; but although I kept my promise and did not call upon her, I met her by accident at the house of a friend, and had a long conversation with her. She was still the same lighthearted being that she always was; but an Indian life, and the constant gaiety in which she had mingled, had made sad inroads on her beauty. She now painted her cheeks, pencilled her eyebrows, covered her lips with vermilion salve, and powdered her face and neck; her hair had become thin, and she wore a false knot at the back of her head. Altogether she had lost her charms in my sight, and I think she must have observed this, for once or twice her eyes filled with tears; but her pride and presence of mind were superior in power to her feelings, and she did not suffer her tears to flow. Had she done so, in coursing down her cheeks they would have disturbed the powder and the paint. She made a remark, which reminded me (rusty as I then was in classics) of a line in Propertius: ,

"Expertus dico. Nemo est in amore fidelis."

She still wore the jewels which Manson had given her; but they now, seemingly, afforded her no delight. She was as tired of them as she was of Manson, who had become " seedy," prosy, frivolous, and incoherent, and the personification of a used-up Calcutta swell. Manson offered me a bill on a house in London, which he said he could let me have, as I was going home, on very advantageous terms. But adversity had made me wary, and I was induced to decline his kind offer. It was rather fortunate that I did so, for " the house at home " was not in existence when I landed in England.

---

What a priceless jewel is experience! What a blessed thing is adversity to contemplate when you have once passed through it, and find yourself within the portals of prosperity!

At Madras the jugglers who came on board the steamer---the very men to whom Sophy had given half- a-sovereign for amusing her when she was coming out ---did not get a fraction from us, although our boy was in ecstasies at their wonderful performances.

At Ceylon the men who came on board with precious stones, and ivory boxes, and tortoise-shell desks, created our laughter, instead of fingering our coin. We offered them pence for articles for which, on the passage out, we had given pounds sterling.

At Aden, instead of throwing half-crowns over the ship's side for the Arab boys to dive after, we threw the pieces of tin which are placed over the corks of soda- •water bottles, and we revelled in the disappointment of the Arabs when they beheld what they had brought up.

At Suez we made no scramble for the first vans, but, modestly, were contented to go in the last. By these means we had more room, and insomuch as we knew there was an order that one van was to wait for the other, and all go into Cairo together, we had no fear of being much behind the rest of the party.

At Cairo we revisited the Mosque, and the Turkish bazaar, and other sights, but at a fifth of the cost of most of the passengers. And we had learnt so well the

necessity of minding our own business, that we did not consider it any part of our duty to dissuade our fellow- travellers from suffering themselves to be imposed upon.

At Alexandria we went not to " the first hotel," but to a " second-rate establishment," where we had good fare at moderate charges, excellent attendance, and, above all, a quiet and good night's rest after the fatigues of the day.

At Malta Sophy said, with a laugh, "Robby, buy me a dog and a family of canaries," and asking her to what price she would like to go, I bought her as many coral ornaments for fifteen shillings as had cost us on the passage to India five pounds ten.

At Gibraltar our purchases were confined to a pair of Barbary slippers (6s. 6d.) Mrs. Hushford, "of the civil service," gave a'guinea for the fellow pair, and thought them " dirt cheap."

At Southampton we did not employ an agent to " clear " our luggage, but went ourselves with it to the custom-house, where, by the expenditure of a little civility, we got it " passed " immediately, and took it to the railway station. We happened to be just in time for a train, and we reached London by nine o'clock that night.

It may be reasonably inquired, "Why go to London when, on landing, you were so close to Upwood?" It was politic. The warmth of the East had made us coldblooded in some matters connected with human nature.

"Go to Dorsetshire? To which house first? To my father's, or to your father's? If we go to your father's house first, my father will be furious; if we go to my father's, your father will be offended. Either way, the slender link which connects these bodies would be snapped asunder."

Sophy saw the force of this reasoning, and was content that I should make a plausible excuse for going to London in the first instance, and then bring my father and hers to our lodgings in town. I had, therefore, a troublesome tooth which I wished extracted by the ablest dentist of the day. And I had to report myself at the India House. These were considered sufficient reasons for our move to town, and up came my father and mother, and Mr. Revelle.

It was a most delightful meeting, truly. But -my son could not comprehend why Mr. Revelle should kiss his mother. It was a liberty which struck the child as improper, and as I did not appear disposed to resent it, he did, and kicked his grandfather with all his might, and swore at him in Hindostanee, to the intense amusement of my father and mother, who, of course, understood every word of the discourse to which the angry- child gave tongue.

My father pronounced his grandson to be a very fine boy, and my mother, taking him on her knee, admitted his " fineness," but remarked it was a pity he swore so vehemently. Sophy conceded that it was very dreadful, but pleaded the impossibility of keeping him away from native servants, and listening to their conversation.

My mother said she supposed it was impossible to prevent it in India, for she suddenly recollected how Charles and myself used to swear when we were little Johnnie's age.

"Then you christened the youngster after me, did you?" said my father.

"Yes," said I, unblushingly.

The old gentleman was vastly pleased at this. But Sophy, on the first opportunity, informed her father, whose Christian name was William, that the child was christened after his godfather, John Fifeleigh, and not after Major Wetherby, "by any manner of means," and she " wondered, and was very much provoked, that Robert could be guilty of such an untruth."

That is the worst of some women (and Mr. Revelle, who was a man of the world, entirely agreed with me), they never can be consistent in innocent mendacity. You may coax them to assist you in half or three parts of a harmless falsehood, but you cannot get them to be a party to a perfect and straightforward dereliction, even in a good cause.

I had not been ten minutes in my father's presence before he began to talk of my luck in " steps." " Why, Bob," said he, ." when you are my age you will be a Major-general. A man who runs through the lieutenants of a regiment in the Bengal Cavalry before be is thirty ought to make a fortune by showing himself at a shilling a-head."

"That's what Mrs. Brill told me," said I.

"Poor Mother Brill!" exclaimed my father; " yes, I saw that Brill was one of the pivots on which your promotion turned. Brill was a noble casualty for you, and so was Fifeleigh. Cholera and war are fine things in their way, certainly. I was deuced sorry that I had left the service when I saw the regiment was going into

N

action. I would have frightened Baxter into invaliding, and have got the command, and booked a C.B.-ship; and, what's more, I'd have written myself into being made A. D. C. to the Queen."

---

It was arranged that we were to go to Upwood for a fortnight, and then spend a fortnight with Mr. Revelle. After that, we were to do whatever we pleased. This sounded very charmingly, and we all left London together, in high spirits.

My brother Charles had got a good living in the north of England. He was married, and had three children. He seldom came to Upwood, and I was glad of this, for Sophy disliked him extremely, although she had never spoken to him.

My boy was now reconciled to his grandmother, and used to sleep with her, and my father was very fond of the dear brat. The more my people saw of Sophy the more they liked her, and when she told them by degrees all we had gone through, the tears would frequently come into their eyes; for no one could better understand than did my father and mother what must have been the real character of our straits and difficulties.

There was now something in store for me which I very little expected. My father contrived to get tip a public dinner, to welcome me on my return to my native land, after having served in the late campaign. Covers were laid for sixty.

At that dinner, after the cloth was drawn, an officer, a Colonel More, who had served in the British army, in the Peninsula, rose to propose my health. To my horror, he began to make me out one of the greatest heroes of the age. Those who listened to him must have fancied, that if I had not been present on the Sutledge, the British army must have perished. And as for Lord Gough and Lord Hardinge, what could they have done without me?

"Good God!" said I to my father, in a whisper, "what is the meaning of this?"

"Hold your tongue," replied my father. "There's a reporter' in the room. It will be all in the ' Times.'"

"In the ' Times! ' " said I. " It will drive me mad. It is the most gross satire. I did nothing beyond swear at the niggers, and tell them not to run."

"Don't be a fool, Robert," said my father. "Listen to what he says."

I did listen --- in a towering passion.

"And, gentlemen," the Colonel proceeded, "who is Captain Robert Wetherby, of the 12th Light Cavalry, to whom we have assembled to do honour ---to welcome back to Dorsetshire? Gentlemen! he is the son of Major John Wetherby, formerly of the Honourable East India Company's service! He is the son of an officer who took the lead at the storming of Bhurtpore! --- the son of that brave officer who so signally distinguished himself in the Pindaree campaign! Let no man say that talent and courage do not descend from sire to son. Chatham and Pitt are one instance. Here is another in the Wetherbys!"

Immense cheering, during which I said to my father, ---

"By heaven! I'll deny it all!"

"Then you'll make a fool of yourself," he replied.

"Suck it all in, as I shall."

It was evident to me that my father had been " charging " the Colonel with the staple of his speech; and that this meeting to do me honour was nothing more than a ruse of my father's to gratify his own personal vanity, and bring up that eternal Bhurtpore.

The Colonel concluded, after speaking for twenty minutes,---

"And now, gentlemen, I must call upon you to drink the health of the Wetherbys --- Father and Son; or rather --- for on this occasion we must reverse it --- the health of the [Wetherbys --- the Son and the Father!"]{.smallcaps}

Then came rapping on the table; and then the guests rose and drank --- " Captain Wetherby---Major Wetherby!"

I was pulling my moustache in a rage, while bowing to each gentleman who addressed me; but my father was smiling blandly, and endeavouring to look modest, but overcome by a sense of his own great military merits, and those of his offspring.

There was a pause.

"You must speak first, Robert," said my father.

"Don't be shy."

I sprang upon my legs, and said; " Gentlemen --- gentlemen "

I was confused, bewildered, and hardly knew what to say.

"Gentlemen, --- I am really very much obliged to you for the honour you have done me in inviting me

here, and drinking my health on my return from India, but I assure you I am quite unconscious of having done the State such immense service as your amiable and gallant chairman has been pleased to picture. I am proud to think that I did my duty, or what I conceived to be my duty, but nothing beyond that, I assure you. As for the native soldiery, I confess to you that my opinion of it, as a body, is "

There was the reporter ready to make note of my opinion, and not desiring just then to be removed from the Company's service, I could not deliver my opinion; and stammering out several times, "I am really very much obliged to you all, gentlemen," I sat down, amidst enthusiastic applause.

Up rose my father. He spoke for half-an-hour. His speech was, of course, a studied one. He said, he could understand the feelings which prompted his son to say that the chairman had overrated his services. He was proud to witness those feelings. He hoped they would continue to the end of his son's life. Modesty was a quality that highly became a woman. So was it also a quality that highly became a soldier. (Loud cheers.) He had discovered that his son was not intended for the Church. He therefore had sent him into the army. On parting with him he had inculcated certain doctrines, by which, he was delighted to think, his son had profited. Allusion had been made to his own services in the Pin- daree campaign --- to his taking the lead at the storming of Bhurtpore. It was usual for good sons to follow in the footsteps of their fathers, if those fathers were worthy of imitation. He must be allowed, with refer

ence to his own deeds, to follow in the footsteps of his son, and to say as little about them as possible --- in short, to slur them over. (Tremendous applause.) He knew what his son's opinion was of the native soldiery as a body. They were the most brave and loyal race that ever enlisted under British banners. They were not mere mercenaries, who fought for their pay. They were heart and soul in the cause. He had served with them on many a hard-fought field. He spoke from experience. He never knew a sepoy flinch --- never knew him murmur, --- even when encompassed by difficulties of the most appalling character. Why was his son beloved by his troopers? Why, because his son had listened to his father's advice. He had always spoken to them with kindness, and treated them with consideration. (Deafening applause.) The 12th Light Cavalry had been most honourably mentioned in the despatches. (Here, without rising, I poured into his ear --- " They were not mentioned at all." He kicked my foot under the table, and went on.) Lord Gough had a great opinion, and justly, of that distinguished regiment. So had Lord Hardinge. Both of those great heroes, who were now covered with glory, must have felt that it was to the Bengal Cavalry they were mainly indebted for their victories.

After this I know not w'hat my father said. I could not follow him.

When my father sat down, I said to him,---

"Governor, you have ruined me!"

"How ruined you?" he inquired.

"Why, I shall have the ' Englishman' and the 'Mo- fussilite' down upon me with leading articles, and I shall never he able to hold up my head in India again," said I.

"Stuff!" cried my father. "You don't suppose India is all the world --- do you? There's nothing now that the Court of Directors will not give you, if you ask for it, since they have heard, or will hear, my sentiments and yours (through the ' Times') about the Bengal Sepoy."

"I will write a letter to the ' Times,' and say I'm no party to this," said I.

"No party to this party?" said my father. "Do you suppose the ^1^ Times' has nothing else to do but print such rubbishing controversy as that? What a noodle you are, Robert! The editor would naturally say to himself, this young man may be all very well with his sword, but rather a poor thing with his pen."

• • • ❖ *

The next morning I devoted myself to writing to the editor of the " Englishman." I begged of him, as a great favour, not to reprint the Upwood banquet; and if any other paper did so, to make such explanation as my assurances warranted him in making; and I forwarded a duplicate of my letter to the editor of the " Mofussilite." I did not care what any of the other papers said, for their editors were not over brilliant, and their abuse was generally considered far more precious than their praise.

It was with a very bad grace that I went down to dinner the day after the Upwood banquet. I took it into my head that Sophy had been holding forth on my valour, and thus had prompted my father to make such

a fool of me and of himself. A wife is often a great blessing when a man wants an outlet for his wrath. He can get rid of his bile with such impunity, and make another being as miserable as himself without incurring the slightest responsibility. The Greek poet, Metrodorus, did not balance with sufficient nicety the advantages and disadvantages of connubial existence.

My father had bought for Johnnie a beautiful Shetland pony; and my mother had given Sophy quantities of old point-lace and antique jewellery; and the consequence was that I was " out of court" on most questions at Upwood; and, with reference to this affair, and the part my wife had taken in it, I was indignantly denounced as a cross-grained, ill-tempered creature, who longed already to get back to that horrid country where men take no delight in anything except boozing, smoking, and gambling. "You know you gambled at Mus- soorie, and ruined your prospects by it," I was told by my wife. Just as if my gambling at Mussoorie had anything whatever to do with my father exposing me to the laughter of the Bengal army!

"And was not your intimacy with Mrs. Manson highly improper? And did I, pray, advise you to race your charger, and cause Smith to be cashiered? And who, I should like to know, induced you to go security to the bank? And did I tell you to be a second in a duel, when you were shot? And it was I, perhaps, who told you to subscribe to a ball to the Governor-general, which cost us seventy rupees, at a time when we were pinching and contriving how to pay our instalments to the bank? Oh, Robert, when I. am dead, you will be sorry for all this. But let us have a separation."

A separation I Why, how was it possible? There was the boy hanging on to the tail of my coat with his right hand, abusing me, and with his left hand clinging to his mother's petticoat, and entreating her to kiss me.

Mr. Revelle used to say, the Wetherbys were " a queer lot," and I began to think there was some foundation for the remark.

While we were at dinner the post came in. A letter was given to my father. He opened it, became very red in the face, tittered, frowned, and involuntarily ejaculated,---

"What a bore!"

"What is it, dear?" inquired my mother?

"Nothing---not the slightest business of yours," replied my father, pettishly, placing the letter beneath his tumbler.

"Indeed!" said my mother, with a sneer.

"Yes," retorted my father, "and you have not the slightest authority to inquire into the nature of my correspondence."

"Oh, very well," said my mother. "Then in future I beg that you will answer all your letters yourself, and not make me the vehicle of your hypocrisy."

This led to a spirited exchange of satirical observations, during which my eyes and those of Sophy met; we smiled, and each blew a kiss to the other.

When my mother and Sophy retired to the drawingroom, I was convinced the former w^r^as going to run

down " the Wetherbys," for she heard me talking loudly to Sophy before dinner. And I was quite right in my conjecture, for Sophy told me afterwards all my mother had said. Amongst other things, when Sophy assured her that I was the most perfect husband on the face of the earth, my mother remarked that I was hardly a Wetherby. I took so much after her, and Charles after the Major!

"Bob," said my father, digging the poker into the coals, when we were all alone ---" I tell you what it is, Bob, the world is made up of humbug."

"Another sentiment of Mrs. Brill's," said I.

"Very likely," said my father. "Mrs. Brill got many sentiments from me. I knew her before she was Brill's wife ---ay, before she was first married. Brill was her second husband, you know. She was a very nice-looking girl, but dark always, and bony about the shoulders. Have some brandy-and-water, Bob, and give me some. And smoke your cheroots. Never mind about making the curtains smell. To tell you the truth, T am going to have a breeze up-stairs to-night. I was very much annoyed at dinner to-day. As you have seen something of the world, I don't mind telling you so."

"Then, you had better give an order," said I, "that the child should sleep with us, or you'll find him an awful nuisance, governor. He will interrupt you."

"Will he?'' said my father, complacently stroking his chin. "Will he ? I know how to manage children, Robert. A look --- a word --- a point of the finger! Quite sufficient."

"But then this child has never had a point of the finger, or a look, or a word," said I. " He has been petted from the day he was bom up to the present hour."

"Never mind that. Look here, Robert. When the news of your death came home, we were very naturally, you know, overcome by our feelings; and I ordered a very splendid monument of pure white marble at that shop in Regent Street, and I sent up the inscription which was to be cut upon it. I wanted it for our church, you know."

"Upon my word, father, it was very kind of you."

"Yes; but there's now an awkwardness about the affair, you see, Robert. When the next mail came home, and contradicted the report of your death---all of us being in deep mourning at the time, and attracting the sympathy of every soul in the church and in the county---hang it all! I forgot to countermand the monument; and here's this infernal sculptor sends me a letter, sir, in which he says " [my father took the letter from his pocket, and referred to itj " in which he says that he has to advise me of having despatched the stone to my address, and hopes it will give me every satisfaction."

Here I laughed aloud.

"What are you laughing at?" my father inquired.

"Nothing," said I. " I beg your pardon."

"Every satisfaction," my father continued, reading from the sculptor's letter. "And he begs to forward at the same time his---what? oh, his account. And what do you suppose his account is, Robert?"

"Fifty pounds," said I.

"Fifty pounds!" replied my father, staring at me. "Fifty pounds! Why, you don't suppose it is a trumpery Chunam-plaster thing, do you? I told you it was marble; and if he has made it as I designed it, it is a most magnificent affair. Flags, cannons, muskets, and swords---perfectly military, I assure you. It would have taken the eye out of the clergyman, and would have furnished him with the text of a funeral sermon, in which the public would have heard a good deal of what you heard last night at the dinner. The cost of the stone, sir, is 210Z., exclusive of the carriage!"

"What a pity it should be wasted!" said I.

"Revelle has two or three times hinted to me," said my father, "that he was proud of the connexion. He has now an opportunity of proving what he says. Let him connect himself with me in paying this bill.''

Again I laughed: who could help laughing?

"It will be down here to-morrow," said my father; " and you shall see it."

Shortly after this he lighted his candle, and went up-stairs. He was in an awful frame of mind!

My wife was not a little amused at the story about my tombstone; and we had not done laughing over it when we heard a noise. My father had left the candle in his dressing-room, and had walked into his bed-room, which was adjoining.

"To be abused and bullied before my son's wife! --- to have our affairs communicated to Revelle! I will not stand it."

Our child, who was fast asleep by his grandmother's

side, was awakened, and, yawning, he murmured out (in Hindostanee), " Papa! be quiet. Come to bed, and go to sleep."

But my father was not disposed to listen to this excellent advice.

"By heaven, I'll not stand it!" repeated my father, in a louder tone.

The child was now aroused. The curtains were drawn, and he mistook my father for me (for our voices were very similar), and fancying my mother was his mother, he called my father names which cannot be breathed to ears polite. "Go back to the mess-room!" said the child. My mother laughed loudly. She was reminded by Johnnie of what I was at four years of age, and how I deported myself on such occasions.

My father fancied my mother was laughing at him, and he was furious.

"Stand it I will not!" he said, clenching his fist, and stamping his foot on the floor. Here little Johnnie called my father a name which he certainly could not stand, seeing that he was the child's ancestor. And, rashing to the bed, he whipped and shook the boy, whose screams immediately brought his mother into the room.

There was no rest to be had in the house that night; and my father and I went down again into the diningroom, and drank some more brandy-and-water, and I smoked several cheroots, and talked about the campaign --- not the one up-stairs---the campaign on the Sut- ledge.

"Do you know what the child called me, Robert?" inquired my father, now sorry for having struck him.

"I can fancy what it was," said I. " I have often longed to smack him myself, but I had not the heart to do so."

"Does he ever use that language to his mother?" he asked.

"Never," I replied. "And never to me, except ■when he thinks I am offended with her."

"Well, it's a good trait, perhaps. Let's go now, and see if all is tranquil aloft. I should like to speak a word or two to your wife, and tell her---you know, Robert."

"Come along," said I.

Sophy was very angry with my father---for the child was still awake, sobbing over the indignity he had experienced---but she forgave the old man, and suffered him to kiss both herself and her offended offspring.

The next day my monument arrived. It was truly " a magnificent affair;" and very cheap for the money it cost, when we consider the number of letters which were cut on the marble, amidst a bower of military emblems.

Not here,

BUT IN A DISTANT LAND,

on the Battle-field of Ferozeshah,

Lie interred the remains of Robert Wetlierby,

a Lieutenant in the 12th Regiment of Bengal Light Cavalry, who died on the 21st of December, 1819,

while gallantly charging at the head Of his troop, in the service of his country.

Aged 29 years.

Lieut. Robert Wetherby, was the eldest son and heir of Major John Wetherby,

formerly of the 12th Regiment of Light Cavalry, who was present throughout the Pindaree campaign, at the Battle of Kotah,

and at

the Storming of Bhurtpore.

Major Wetherby was the youngest son of Thomas Wetherby, of Upwood,

who represented the County of Dorsetshire during several successive Parliaments.

Thomas Wetherby was the eldest son of

Sir Lucius Wetherby,

an Eminent Lawyer, who once held the office of Solicitor-general, and who was the son of

Gore Wetherby, a Major-General in the Army.

The Wetherbys came over to England with William the Conqueror, and have been settled in Dorsetshire for many generations back.

"Why didn't you trace them, on the stone, down to the Conqueror's time?" said I.

"Because, to tell you the truth, Boh," said my father, "in digging for ancestors, since I have been home, I dug a little too far, and found out that the great root of the family was a hatter in the Poultry, who flourished about the time of the great fire in London. He made a fortune, and bought Upwood from a ruined courtier. That's the long and the short of it. The hatter's name was simply Weather---and not a bad name for a hatter either; but Sir Lucius, the lawyer, dropped the ' a ' and tacked on the ' by; ' and there we are, Bob---' The Wetherbys of Upwood.' The world s all humbug!"

"So I perceive,'' said I, smiling at the tombstone.

• S'.

Hatters went on very pleasantly for some time at Upwood, and I was granted a week's leave to visit London on business; and one day, while walking down the sunny side of Regent Street, I saw a lady descend from a carriage, and enter a fashionable shop. She was dressed very handsomely, but quietly, in black. It struck me that I knew the face, and I lingered near the door of the shop until she came out. Her eyes caught mine. She blushed and seemed very ill at ease; but she advanced, and gave me her hand. The moment she spoke I knew who she was. It was Mrs. Fifeleigh--- poor Jack's Mary Jane! She was looking so fresh, and so well, I was satisfied she was leading a respectable life, albeit the carriage and horses aroused, at first, other suspicions.

"I am living with my family," said she. "They have forgiven me, and received me in their home; for they are now persuaded I was insane during one period of my life in India. Come with me to my mother's house. I long to talk to you---to ask you several questions. Do come with me."

I handed her into her carriage, sat beside her, and we were driven to a square in Tybumia. How joyed was I to see that beautiful woman reclaimed! Of late, I had heard nothing of her, and I had shuddered when speculating upon what her fate had been, or might be.

We were all alone in the house. Her mother and two younger sisters had gone out to pay visits. ■

"For some time," said Mrs. Fifeleigh, "I led a life such as cannot be described; but at length my prayers were listened to, and I, a penitent sinner, was once more suffered to sleep beneath a virtuous roof."

Mrs. Fifeleigh had become very religious of late. What she wished to hear' from me were the particulars of her husband's death. And who could furnish them, so accurately as myself? She was greatly affected, but comforted at the same time, when I told her that Fifeleigh's last words were, as he lay wounded and dying on the field of battle, "Let me look at the stars, and think of dear Mary Jane!"

"And did he forgive me?" she cried.

"Forgive you? Yes!" said I. "And he died adoring you; for he, too, gave you the credit of being mad, and irresponsible for your actions."

"Oh! Robert Wetherby," said she, grasping my hands in hers, "you have made me so happy! I care not now how soon I may be removed from this world. Poor John!"

And she gave vent to a violent flood of tears, in which I was compelled to join.

"And you are quite sure John forgave me?" she again inquired.

"Yes, quite sure," said I. " You remember that net you used to wear? and those shoes in which you used to walk about the verandah, early in the mornings, at Umballah?"

"Yes, I remember,'' said she.

o

"Well, poor fellow! '' said I, "he died with that net and those shoes over his heart; and they were buried with him."

I was sorry I had told her this, for the touching truth was too much for her. She fainted, and I was obliged to ring the bell for the servants, and there was a scene.

I called to see her next day, and on the following . Sunday I escorted her to church, and afterwards dined with her at her mother's house.

Here end my "Chapters of Indian Experience." But since the public has been pleased to take an interest in the Wetherby family, "My Furlough" may not be uninteresting to the general reader. It will be published (D. F.) during the ensuing year.

The End