“For the moment, it is a mere mutiny, but it will soon be a rebellion, and I don’t conceal from myself the danger of what I am doing, as you, in all likelihood, will suspect. Not dangers from the Queen’s fellows--for they shall never take me alive--but the dangers I run from my present associates, and who, of course, only half trust me.... Do you remember old Commissary-General Yates--J.C.V.R. Yates, the old ass used to write himself? Well, amongst the other events of the time, was the sack and ‘loo’ of his house at Cawnpore, and the capture of ais pretty wife, whom they brought in here a prisoner. I expected to find the poor young creature terrified almost out of her reason. Not a bit of it! She was very angry with the fellows who robbed her, and rated, them roundly in choice Hindostanee, telling one of the chiefs that his grandfather was a scorched pig. Like a woman, and a clever woman, too, though she recognised me-- I can almost swear that she did--she never showed it, and we talked away all the evening,-and smoked our hookahs together in Oriental guise. I gave her a pass next morning to Calcutta, and saw her safe to the great trunk road, giving her bearers as far as Behdarah. She expressed herself as very grateful for my attentions, and hoped at some future time--this with a malicious twinkle of her gray eyes--to show the ‘Bahadoor’ that she had not forgotten them. So you see there are lights as well as shadows in the life of a rebel.” I omit a portion here, and come to the conclusion, which was evidently added in haste. “‘Up and away!’ is the order. We are off to Bithoor. The Nana there--a staunch friend, as it was thought, of British rule--has declared for independence, and as there is plenty of go in him, look out for something ‘sensational.’ You wouldn’t believe how, amidst all these stirring scenes, I long for news--from what people call home--of Rocksley and Uncle G., and the dear Soph; but more from that villa beside the Italian lake. I’d give a canvas bag that I carry at my girdle with a goodly stock of pearls, sapphires, and rubies, for one evening’s diary of that cottage! “If all go on as well and prosperously as I hope for, I have not the least objection, but rather a wish that you would tell the world where I am, and what I am doing. Linked with failure, I’d rather keep dark; but as a sharer in a great success, I burn to make it known through the length and breadth of the land that I am alive and well, and ready to acquit a number of personal obligations, if not to the very fellows who injured me, to their friends, relatives, and cousins, to the third generation. Tell them, Algy, ‘A duel’s amang ye, cutting throats,’ and add, if you like, that he writes himself your attached friend,