Next, in point of rank, was Mr. Goldmore, an ex-judge of the Sudder Dewanny Adawlut; a man of birth and education, and an excellent sample of the distinguished service to which he belonged. His manners were kind and urbane, though he was a little peppery sometimes, particularly when I beat him at chess. He had come home a martyr to liver; and the yellow cheek, the lacklustre eye, and the feeble step, all told too plainly that he was returning to die. His wife, fifteen years younger than himself, exhibited beside him a striking contrast; she, “buxom, blithe, and _debonnair_”—a vigorous plant in florid pride; he, poor fellow, in the “sear and yellow” leaf. She was a warm-hearted, excellent creature, native goodness beaming in her eye, but had one fault, and that a prominent one. Having in India, as is often the case with the sex, been thrown much at out-stations amongst male society, she had insensibly adopted a “mannish” tone, used terms of Indian conventional slang—bad in a man, but odious from female lips—laughed heartily at stories seasoned with equivoque, and sometimes told such herself with off-hand _naïveté_ at the cuddy-table, producing a wink from Mr. Grinnerson to Ensign O’Shaughnessy, and an uncommon devotion to his plate on the part of Mr. Goldmore himself. Major Rantom, of the Dragoons—soldierly, gentleman-like, and five-and-thirty—commanded the detachment of troops, to which were attached Ensigns Gorman and O’Shaughnessy, two fine “animals,” that had recently been caught in the mountains of Kerry; and an ancient centurion, Capt. Marpeet, of the Native Infantry, must conclude these samples of the masculine gender. Marpeet was a character, upon the whole—a great man for short whist and Hodgson’s pale ale. The Sporting Magazine, Taplin’s Farriery, and Dundas’s Nineteen Manœuvres, seemed to have constituted the extent of his reading, though some conversation he one day had about “zubber, zeer, and pesh,” and that profound work the Tota Kuhannee, seemed to indicate that he had at least entered on the flowery paths of Oriental literature. Dundas, however, was his strong point—his tower of strength—his one idea. Ye powers! how amazingly convincing and fluent he was when he took that subject in hand! Many a tough discussion would he have with the pompous little colonel, whether the right or left stood fast, &c., and who, having been a Resident, and knowing, therefore, everything, of course knew something of that also.