The murder was out:--the club soda had been systematically made of luke-warm fluid, tainted with the indescribable flavour of half cooked water. At the well a number of _bhistis_ were chattering with a wandering _faqir_; and if his _lotah_ had not been let down, the last time it was used, into a cholera-infected well, it was no fault of the arrangements. As the health of the entire European community depends on the purity of this well it should surely be worth while to make some attempt to secure its purity. It is quite true that the building of a well-house with a locked door might not ensure the absolute exclusion of unauthorised intruders, but an occasional surprise visit would go far to ensure a very general, if not complete, obedience to orders; especially after detection of neglect on some occasion had been followed by prompt dismissal of the responsible servant, and after the prompt destruction of any unauthorised water skins found in the well house. It is no more difficult to secure the locking up of a well, than it is to check peculations of club stores, provided that equal attention be devoted to the matter. No one expects absolute success in either task, but there can be no doubt that ill-gotten gains are successfully reduced to a minimum in most well-managed institutions; and surely our lives are as important as the curtailing of our club bills to the extent of a few shillings per mensem. Besides, to put it on a mere commercial basis, an attack of typhoid is a most expensive luxury, even apart from its dangers. After all, a doctor and two trained nurses for a month, followed up by an unostentatious funeral, cost something, and a very small proportion of the energy that is devoted by zealous honorary secretaries to thwarting the efforts of the club “bearer” to appropriate kerosine would go far to keep a well free from pollution. In places where no reliable aerated water is obtainable, there is no longer any necessity of drinking the more than doubtful fluids bottled in some dirty corner of the bazaar, as there is no longer any necessity for any complicated plant for the purpose. At the present day, carbonic acid, compressed in steel cylinders, can be obtained at all large centres, and the attachment for filling bottles costs so little, and the method of using it is so simple that there is no difficulty whatever in making aerated waters at home, no skill whatever being required in the process. The germs of certain diseases, such as cholera, are killed by the prolonged action of carbonic acid under pressure, and on this account, it is a good plan to keep a stock of aerated waters for a week before using them, but it must be understood that this is no protection against many other diseases, the majority of their germs being unaffected by carbonic acid.