as a guiding illustration, that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling around looking for an eligible tree on which to hang himself, had claimed the hospitality of a planter's bungalow, the dweller therein would have been bound to accord him that hospitality. Not even newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away. The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_ on which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high with a famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half luncheon. After his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot are neighbours and within a radius of thirty miles is considered next door. He would ride that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a house brightened by the presence of womanhood. His anxious period is _mahaye_ time, when the indigo is in the vats and the quantity and quality of the yield depend so much on care and skill. But except at _mahaye_ time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days with a ball every second night. It used to be worth a journey to India to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler" over an awkward fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the run home on the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and it must remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her charms had blighted the title of "the destroying angel."