Evening brought with it the dullest hours of the day. The Calcutta newspaper, which arrived by post every afternoon, was soon read; and the English journals sent to us from regimental headquarters were a month old. None of us were keen card players. Our library was small; and, as light literature, drill books soon cease to charm. Our daily life was too uneventful to afford many subjects of conversation; and as topics the incompetency of Naik Chandu Singh or the slackness on parade of Sepoy Pem Singh were not engrossing. England seemed too far away for the discussion of its politics to interest us. The pitiable limitations of men as talkers was painfully evident. Not being women we had no ever-ready subjects of conversation in dress, babies and servants' misdemeanours; and we could not talk scandal about ourselves. So, after the meagre dinner that our Gurkha cook contrived out of the athletic hen or tinned sausage, we threw ourselves into long chairs around the fire; Creagh betook himself to the study of military books for his forthcoming examination for promotion, and the doctor and I thumbed tattered novels we had read a dozen times. But Buxa was not the loneliest spot in which I have been quartered. As a subaltern I was stationed alone for many months in Asirgarh in the Central Provinces, an old Indian fortress on a hill lost in the jungle. That was solitude itself. My nearest European neighbour was forty miles away. I saw no white face and spoke no word of English for months at a time. Once a year a General was supposed to pay it the compliment of an official inspection, although the garrison consisted only of a British subaltern and fifty sepoys. But I think that after one occasion when the General and his staff officers nearly died on my hands of ptomaine poisoning--really contracted on their journey thither, but ascribed by the uncharitable among my friends to my base devices and resentment at having my peace disturbed by this officious intrusion--this duty grew out of favour with generals who valued their lives. This detachment has since been abolished.