accumulated dulness with which years of licensed favouritism had crowded the ranks of the service. On the whole it was not true, or anything like true, that India was well administered. The wonder, however, was, considering the class of men to whom the job had been entrusted, that it had ever got administered at all. 'D---- his impudence!' exclaimed Cockshaw with all the fervour of an indignation which had been gaining strength through a dozen pages of unpalatable reading; and the expression may be taken as representing in a concise formula the view which Cockshaw had come to take of his colleague's mental attitude, and of the respect or consideration to which he and his proposals were entitled. The meetings of the board grew very stern and stiff. Unluckily, too, at this very time the Board's Annual Report had to be written, and the conflicting views of the members as to the cause of the disaster could scarcely fail to be brought prominently forward. It was one of the occasions which Strutt had been accustomed to treat historically, and which called, he felt, for something grander than Whisp's businesslike and unpretentious style. 'My good sir,' he would say, 'I have no time to read history: I am _making_ it.' In the good old days, when Strutt had his own way, he would have knocked the affair off in half-a-dozen well-rounded, vague, magniloquent phrases; have left the connection of the Board with the whole thing in obscurity; have congratulated the Government on the excellent behaviour of the troops; applauded the accuracy and range of the Armstrong battery, and paid Providence a handsome compliment on the fortunate turn which events had taken. But now Strutt felt a painful misgiving that this sort of thing would not do. When he began the paragraph--'The sun of the official year has set in blood,' he saw Blunt's horrid cynical look, and knew that he would never stand it. Any allusion to Providence--and Strutt felt that one was quite essential to anything like a proper peroration--Blunt would, he was sure, ruthlessly draw his pen through. Nor was it only as to matters of taste and style that Strutt felt embarrassed. Fotheringham would, he was certain, deprecate any reference to a connection between the outbreak and the Rumble Chunder Grant. 'Policy,' he would say, in a mysterious way, 'calls for reticence. We may be misconstrued, but we cannot afford to show all the world our hand; we don't want the hillmen to imagine that we admit them to have a grievance.' Blunt, on the other hand, would be for having it all down in black and white--for describing the outbreak as the natural result of indistinctness, cowardice and idleness. Altogether Strutt felt that his lines had been cast in rough places, and began to agree with Fotheringham that outsiders like Blunt were a mistake.