The military quarter was entirely distinct from the native city. And here let the English reader divest himself at once of all European ideas, and keep clear of them, as much as in him lies, during the whole course of this narrative. Let him put aside all preconceived notions of a barrack,--of a yard paved with rough stones, and darkened by buildings four storeys high, at the windows of which lounge stalwart warriors in various stages of _déshabille_, digesting their fresh boiled-beef by the aid of a short pipe and a languid gossip. Let him try to form to himself a picture of a military station in Northern India, for it was within the precincts of such a station that was played out the most terrible tragedy of our age. The cantonments lay along the bank of the river, over a tract extending six miles from north-west to south-east: for, wheresoever in Hindostan Englishmen make their homes, no regard is had to economy of space. Each residence stands in a separate "compound," or paddock, of some three or four acres, surrounded by an uneven, crumbling mound and ditch, with here and there a ragged hedge of prickly pear: for all over India fences appear to exist rather for the purpose of marking boundaries than for any protection they afford against intruders. The house, like all houses outside the Calcutta Ditch, consists of a single storey, built of brick, coated with white plaster;--the whole premises, if the owner be a bachelor or a subaltern, in a most shabby and tumble-down condition. A flight of half a dozen steps leads up to a verandah which runs round three sides of the building. The noticeable objects here will probably be a native tailor, working in the attitude adopted by tailors in all lands where men wear clothes; a wretched being, squatted on his haunches, lazily pulling the string of a punkah that passes through a hole in the brickwork into the Sahib's bedroom, a monotonous occupation, which from time to time he sweetens by snatches of sleep; a Madras valet, spreading butter on the Sahib's morning toast with the greasy wing of a fowl; and, against the windward wall, a row of jars of porous red clay, in which water is cooling for the Sahib's morning bath.