We were soon in that part of the town called Derriow Gunge, where a portion of the troops were cantoned,[58] and drawing up before an odd sort of building, of a very mixed style of architecture, my friend dismounted, and announced my arrival at Marpeet Hall, “to which, my boy,” said he, with a squeeze, “you are heartily welcome, and where you may stick up your spoon, with my two babes in the wood there, as long as you please; don’t blow me up, that’s all, or set the house on fire, and you may do what else you like. So now for breakfast,” said the captain, cracking his half-hunter (whip), as a hint, I presumed, to the _bawurchee_ (cook) to be expeditious, and shouting “_hazree looe juldee_” (“breakfast quickly”), he motioned us to enter, and followed. The captain’s residence had been in the olden time a mosque or tomb, I cannot exactly say which; but with the addition of a terrace and verandah, and a few extra doors punched through walls six feet thick, it made a capital abode, combining the coolness in summer and the warmth in winter, which result from this solid mode of construction, with the superadded European conveniences. My friend’s house was but a type of that widespreading process of adaptation which is now going on throughout the East, and its inhabitants, and which, as long as it does not effect a too radical alteration of that which “nature and their stars” intended for a people so circumstanced, is much to be rejoiced at. Breakfast was laid out in a vaulted chamber, as massive as a bomb-proof, the walls and roofs in compartments, with here and there a niche for a cheragh, or lamp. There were we, a jovial quartetto, eating red herrings and rashers of the “unclean beast,” where the moollah had pronounced his “_Allah-il-Allah_,” or possibly over the respectable dust of some mighty Mogul Omrah. After breakfast, Marpeet took me to the adjutant of my new regiment—a tall, strapping, good-looking man, of about eight-and-twenty, who told me I must report myself immediately to Colonel Bobbery, the commandant of my regiment, as also of the station. “You have been some time on your way up, haven’t you?” said the adjutant, significantly; “we began to be half afraid that the Thugs had made away with you, or that you had gone on a pilgrimage to Hurdwar.” “I fear I have exceeded my proper time very considerably,” I replied; “but I must ascribe it to the hospitality of friends whom I met with on the way.” “Well, you must settle all that,” replied the adjutant, “with the colonel, who has often been inquiring for you, and to whose quarters we will now, if you please, proceed.” I began to feel confoundedly nervous, and to apprehend that I was now about to taste a few of the incipient sweets of military subjection. The adjutant buckled on his accoutrements, I did the like with mine, which, at Marpeet’s suggestion, I had brought with me, and off we walked to the colonel’s.