to the Ganges for their annual dip in the sacred stream; a gang of gipsies; a string of camel-drivers; or a troop of musicians escorting a celebrated nautch-dancer to her home in Cashmere, after a successful season in Bengal. However it might be, it invariably happened that, a few hours after the strangers had entered the station, the bazaar and the cantonments were in a ferment of gossip and conjecture; the sepoys at once grew sulky and idle; the Mahomedans of the town became insolent, and the Hindoos pert. The very domestic servants appeared to share the contagion; the cooks got drunk, and the grooms stupid; the water-carrier omitted to fill the bath, and the butler to ice the Moselle; the peon spent twice his usual number of hours in conveying a note to the next compound but one; while the bearers delighted to insult their mistress by smoking under her window, and coming bareheaded into her presence, whenever the Sahib and his horsewhip were well out of the way. To us, who from the standing-point of complete and certain knowledge look back upon that March and April pregnant with a great and sombre future, it seems indeed miraculous that our countrymen then resident in India should not have entertained a suspicion of what those months would bring forth. It appears incredible that the officers should have lived their ordinary lives; hunting; dining; dancing; speculating on the probable height of the thermometer, and the possible chances of promotion; while within a few yards of their quarters the men were debating the programme of the coming mutiny; arranging who was to shoot down the adjutant, and who was to fire the thatch of the colonel's bungalow; discussing their hopes of assistance from Gwalior, Nepaul, and St. Petersburg. Can it be believed that morning after morning our countrymen looked down the row of dark faces and gleaming eyes, and never dreamed that in all that array, so fair and orderly to view, any heart beat with a loftier ambition than could be satisfied by a stripe or an epaulette; with a deadlier malice than might be gratified by the disappointment of some rival in the good opinion of the soubahdar? And yet, so it was. In spite of all that was said and written concerning the childlike docility of the affectionate sepoy, confidence and regard did not exist between the officer and the soldier. That the case had once been far otherwise was acknowledged on all sides; and the change was noted by military men of the old school with regret, qualified by a slight tincture of self-satisfaction. Young subalterns retorted that the ancient intimacy between superior and inferior was connected with the loose habits which disgraced Anglo-Indian society in days gone by, when the soldier pandared to the vices of his officer, or, at any rate, was cognisant of their existence. Those who have studied cause and effect will be slow to accept the theory that this estrangement between the mess-room and the lines was in any great measure due to the