Mr. Pollitt was enchanted with his present quarters, with the great rambling house, its gardens, its situation, its quaint furniture. The solitude and silence were an extraordinary refreshment to the little world-worn cockney, after the roar of the London traffic, the throbbing of engines, and the rumbling of railway carriages. In honour of the new arrival, the khansamah sent up a remarkably well-cooked dinner, not at all a jungle _menu_. There was excellent soup, fresh fish from a mountain “tal” (a lake), _entrées_, a brace of hill partridges, sweets, yellow cream, fruit, and black coffee. The claret was a still further agreeable surprise; it had been laid in by a connoisseur, and imported direct from Bordeaux _viâ_ Pondicherry. But the greatest surprise of all was presented in the person of the host himself. With his heart warmed by sound old wine and the presence of a sound old friend, Major Jervis kindled up into a semblance of what he once had been. He talked connectedly and even brilliantly; he laughed and joked, and listened with unaffected delight to the history of Mr. Pollitt’s journey and adventures _en route_. His eyes shone with something of their ancient fire; the lines and wrinkles seemed to fade from his face; his voice was that of a man who could still make himself heard on parade. Mr. Pollitt gazed and hearkened in blank amazement; he was entranced and carried away breathless by chronicles of hairbreadth escapes, tiger shooting, and elephant catching; by tales of Eastern superstitions, of lucky and unlucky horses, places, and people, stories of native life; of an English nobleman who lived in a bazaar, earning his bread by repairing carts and ekkas; of a young officer of good family and fortune, who had lost his head about a native girl, had abandoned his country, profession, and religion, and had adopted her people, and embraced her faith; how, in vain, his wealthy English relatives had besought him to return to them; how they had come out to seek him--had argued and implored, and finally prevailed on him to abandon his associates; and how, ere they had reached Bombay, they had lost him--he, unable to break the spell of the siren, had escaped back to his old haunts. He told of Englishmen who were lepers, living in sad solitude among the hills, unknown and nameless; of the burning of witches, of devil-worship, black magic, and human sacrifices. The most thrilling and extraordinary items of his past were unrolled as a scroll, and recapitulated in vivid and forcible language.