At Port Said he received a cheerful epistle from Belle; she wrote a good hand, and, like many people who are not brilliantly intellectual, an excellent letter, if her orthography was not always above suspicion. She had the knack of giving interesting items of news in a short space, but among her whole budget there was not a word about her cousin--truly the play of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. After a rough passage through the south-west monsoon, Mr. Holroyd arrived in Bombay, and set out for a four days’ railway journey up the country. Once the Ghauts are crossed, there is but little to enliven the landscape, through the low scrub jungle of the Central Provinces, through large tracts of grain, varied by a few mosques and tombs, past fortified mud villages, herds of lean cattle, and whitewashed railway stations, where the same bill of fare remains unchanged from year’s end to year’s end--tough beefsteak and fiery curry! At last, in the dim light of early morning, George arrived at his destination, the insignificant cantonment of Mangobad. His brother officers welcomed him warmly, listened eagerly to all his news, and enquired about his new guns, and mentioned a couple of smart racing ponies that they had, so to speak, marked down for him! “No doubt they would suit me down to the ground if I could afford them,” he answered in reply to a suggestion that he ought to wire and secure them at once. “But I can’t afford anything better than a barrack tat. It’s a fact,” looking frankly round his comrades who were assembled in the billiard-room, after mess. “I am stone broke; I have lost a lot of money. I am as poor as Job.” Captain La Touche, a stout dapper-looking man, his special friend, paused as he was about to light a cigarette, and exclaimed: “Now then, young Holroyd, so you would go to Monaco!” “Not I! I never went near the place. I lost the money in an investment, in--in short, in--in family--matters.” “Well, I am truly sorry to hear it,” said his comrade, coming over and taking a seat beside him, “but you have three nags here and a good kit, and you can scrape along with very little besides your pay, as long”--and here he eyed him sharply--“as you don’t think of getting married.” “I suppose you know that Jones of the other battalion is going to commit matrimony,” said George, by way of changing the conversation. “Going to be married, is he?” growled a grizzled major, “and serves him right. The Lord be praised, that’s a folly of which I have never been guilty.” “Nor I,” added Captain La Touche, who was a bachelor, and proud of his estate. “Don’t shout till you are out of the wood,” returned George impressively. “Why not?--I am practically out of the wood! There is no fear of me--why I’ve actually been in action with a would-be father-in-law, and came out scatheless.” “How--you never confessed this before?”