As a rule, junior civilians are despatched without ruth to lonely jungle districts, where they never see another white face for weeks, and their only associates are their native subordinates, their staffs of domestics, and the simple dwellers in the neighbouring villages. Now and then they may chance on an opium official, or a forest officer, and exchange cheroots, and newspapers; but these meetings are rare. After a busy university career, after an immense strain on the mental faculties, necessary to passing a severe examination, the dead sameness of that life, the silence and loneliness of the jungle (aggravated by the artless prattle of the office baboo), is enough to unhinge the strongest mind. Miles and miles from the haunts of his countrymen, from books and telegrams, and the stir and excitement of accustomed associations, the plunge from the roar of the London streets, and life at high pressure, to the life in a solitary up-country district, is indeed a desperate one; especially if the new-comer’s eyes and ears are not open to the great book of Nature--if he sees no beauty in stately peepul-trees, tracts of waving grain, venerable temples, and splendid sunsets; if he does not care to beat for pig, or shoot the thirsty snipe, but merely sits in his tent door in the cool of the evening, his labours o’er, and languishes for polo, cards, and theatres. Then he may well curse his lot; he is undeniably in a bad way. Pelham Brande had nothing to fear from loneliness or _ennui_. Sara made him an excellent helpmate. She picked up the language and customs with surprising facility; she proved a capital housekeeper, and as shamelessly hard at a bargain as any old native hag. But she never took to books, or to the letter “h.” For years the Brandes lived in out-of-the-way districts, and insignificant stations, until by slow degrees his services and abilities conducted him to the front. As advancing time promoted him, his wife declined in looks, and increased in bulk, and her tastes and eccentricities became fixed. Pelham was not actually ashamed of his partner, but he was alive to the fact, that, with a cultivated gentlewoman at the head of his establishment, he would have occupied a vastly more agreeable social position. But he never admitted--what his friends loudly affirmed--that, as he sat opposite to Sara day after day, he was also sitting face to face with the one great mistake of his life!