were to march at seven o'clock in the morning I heard the monotonous drumming and the shrill voices throughout the night; for the entertainment did not end before five o'clock. And it was a hollow-eyed detachment that tramped behind us on the dusty road that day. Our route lay at an angle to our former course which had been due south; for now we headed north-east towards the jungle and the hills again. On the left hand lay the ragged fringe of the forest stretching east and west beyond the limit of vision; and high above it towered the long rampart of the mountains. Far away as we were we could see the white specks of the Picquet Towers at Buxa. And back among the jagged peaks rose up the snow-clad summit of a mountain in Bhutan, its gleaming crest seeming to float like a cloud in air above the darker hills. Over the level plain we spread out in fighting formation, one company forming an advanced guard and driving back the skirmishing line of the other which acted as the rear guard of a retreating enemy. And here and there the peasants working in the fields, knowing nothing of the harmlessness of blank cartridges, fled in terror at the sound of the firing. We halted for our bivouac near a village in a mission settlement of Santals, a wild tribe recently civilised by hard-working missionaries and taught the dignity of labour and the joys of agriculture. We met the clergyman and his wife who were in charge of the settlement and invited them to dinner with us. They showed us a large iron church in the village, the materials of which had been purchased by money willingly subscribed by the Santals, who had erected the building with their own hands. Our guests told us that their half-tamed flock, when they saw us marching in, had deserted the village and fled into the jungle. They explained to their wondering pastor that we were soldiers, and soldiers were folk whose one object in life was to kill people--and who easier to slay than the poor Santals? It took him hours to induce them to return to their homes. But before night they had lost all fear and flocked inquisitively round our bivouac.