'Well, it was a strange affair--very much out of the common, and happened in this way. Duncan Skene was Captain of our Grenadiers--ah, we _had_ Grenadiers then, before the muddlers of later years came!--and a handsomer fellow than Duncan never wore a pair of epaulettes. A year before we stormed Jhansi from the Pandies, we were in quarters there, and all was as quiet at Allahabad as it is here in the valley of the Esk. We did not occupy the city or the Star Fort, but we had lines outside the former then, and one night Duncan, when pretty well primed, it was thought, after leaving the mess bungalow, betook him towards his own, which stood in rather a remote part of the cantonment. All seemed dark and quiet, and the _ghurries_ at the posts had announced the hour of two in the morning, when Duncan came unexpectedly upon a large and well-lighted tent, within which he saw six or seven fellows of ours--old faces that he knew, but had not seen for some time--all carousing and drinking round the table; he entered, and was at once made welcome by them all. 'Now, Duncan must have been pretty well primed indeed not to have been sobered and chilled by what he saw; he could scarcely believe his eyes or his own identity, and thought that for the past year he must have been in a dream; for there he was met with outstretched hands and hearty greetings by many of ours who he thought were gone to their last homes. There was Jack Atherly, second to none in the hunting-field, whom he had seen knocked over by a matchlock ball in a rascally hill fight; and there, too, was Charley Thorold, once our pattern sub and pattern dancing man, who he thought had fallen the same day at the head of the Light Company; there, too, were Maxwell and Seton, our best strokes at billiards, whom he had seen--or thought he had seen--die of jungle fever in Nepaul; and Hawthorn and Bob Stuart, for whom he had backed many a bill, and who had been assassinated by Dacoits; but now seeming all well and jolly, hale and hearty, though a trifle pale, after all they had undergone. It was a marvellous--a bewildering meeting; but he felt no emotion either of fear or surprise--as it is said that in dreams we seldom feel the latter, though some of his hosts in figure did at times look a little vaporous and indistinct. 'He was forced to sit down and drink with them, which he did, while old regimental jokes were uttered and stories told till the tent seemed to whirl round on its pole, the pegs all in pursuit of each other; and then Duncan thought he must be off, as he was detailed for guard at dawn. But ere he quitted them, they all made him promise that he was to rejoin them at the same place that day twelvemonth, a long invitation, at which he laughed heartily, but to which he acceded, promising faithfully to do so; then he reeled away, and remembered no more till he was found fast asleep under the hedge of his compound by the patrol about morning gun-fire.