loafer said, and a people wrapped up in cotton wool and ungetatable. Will any man, who really knows something of a little piece of India and has not the fear of running counter to custom before his eyes, explain how this impression is produced, and why it is an erroneous one? This digression has taken us far from the child’s pony of Ram Baksh. Nasirabad marked the end of the Englishman’s holiday, and there was sorrow in his heart. “Come back again,” said Ram Baksh cheerfully, “and bring a gun with you. Then I’ll take you to Gungra, and I’ll drive you myself. Drive you just as well as I’ve driven these four days past.” An amicable open-minded soul was Ram Baksh. May his tongas never grow less. “This ’ere Burma fever is a bad thing to have. It’s pulled me down awful; an’ now I am going to Peshawar. _Are_ you the Station-Master?” It was Thomas--white cheeked, sunken-eyed, drawn-mouthed Thomas--travelling from Nasirabad to Peshawar on pass; and with him was a Corporal new to his stripes and doing station duty. Every Thomas is interesting, except when he is too drunk to speak. This Thomas was an enthusiast. He had volunteered, from a Home-going regiment shattered by Burma fever, into a regiment at Peshawar, had broken down at Nasirabad on his way up with his draft, and was now journeying into the unknown to pick up another medal. “There’s sure to be something on the Frontier,” said this gaunt, haggard boy--he was little more, though he reckoned four years’ service and considered himself somebody. “When there’s anything going, Peshawar’s the place to be in, they tell me; but I hear we shall have to march down to Calcutta in no time.” The Corporal was a little man and showed his friend off with great pride:--“Ah, you should have come to us,” said he; “we’re the regiment, we are.” “Well, I went with the rest of our men,” said Thomas. “There’s three hundred of us volunteered to stay on, and we all went for the same regiment. Not but what I’m saying yours is a good regiment,” he added with grave courtesy. This loosed the Corporal’s tongue, and he discanted on the virtues of the regiment and the merits of the officers. It has been written that Thomas is devoid of _esprit de corps_, because of the jerkiness of the arrangements under which he now serves. If this be true, he manages to conceal his feelings very well; for he speaks most fluently in praise of his own regiment; and, for all his youth, has a keen appreciation of the merits of his officers. Go to him when his heart is opened, and hear him going through the roll of the subalterns, by a grading totally unknown in the _Army List_, and you will pick up something worth the hearing. Thomas, with the Burma fever on him, tried to cut in, from time to time, with stories of his officers and what they had done “when we was marchin’ all up and down Burma,” but the little Corporal went on gaily.