One morning I was sitting as usual by the MEEBHOY'S bedside. I had just related to him my adventure with the Lord Mayor of Dublin, whom, as readers of contemporary journals will remember, I had been compelled to chastise for the unpardonable affront of calling me by my Christian name at a public meeting, by kicking him bodily from end to end of the Rotunda, breaking three chandeliers as he spun through the air, and imprinting the shape of his back on the opposite wall, where it may still be observed by the curious. This adventure, and the story of my subsequent escape from the dungeons of the Dublin Mansion House, have rarely failed to extort applause from those to whom I have narrated them. But on this occasion the MEEBHOY was silent and _distrait_. He lay for some time drumming in an absent-minded way with his fingers on the front aluminium door of his wound (the famous operation had by this time been successfully performed), and made no comment whatever on the tale I had related to him. Then suddenly he turned, looked me full in the face, and addressed me. "Harkye, Sirrah," he observed, "your story has interested me strangely; but there is that in my mind which demands an exit. Methinks that they who hold governance here mistake me strangely. Because I am all but corpsed, they think they can neglect this JOHNNY. The Ranee has but once sent a stable-helper to inquire after me. Grammercy, but such treatment is scurvy, and I mean to show the old witch that HADJU THÂR knows what's what, and, by Jingo, he's going to have it all the time. That's so." I have forgotten, I think, to mention that my friend had learnt his English in Seringapatam from such examples as he could lay his hands on in that remote island, and the result was a certain patchiness of style, which did not, however, by any means, interfere with the vigour and fluency of his diction. "Do you suppose," I said, "that this slight is intentional? Really, I cannot believe that the Ranee would willingly neglect so gallant and devoted a servant." "That shows me you little know the Queen of the Diamond City. Why, blow me tight, she's as artful as a cartload of monkeys, and in profundity of design and daring of execution, she'd give a man-eating tiger two stone and a handsome beating over any course you care to name. But I am resolved to be avenged. Never shall it be said that the descendant of a thousand kings had the comether put on him by a cinder-faced old omadhaun like that. See here now," he continued, drawing me closer to him, while he glanced furtively round and sank his voice to a whisper, "it's yourself I'm talking to. Hast heard of the Pink Hippopotamus?" "What!" I replied; "the sacred animal of the Seringapatamese, the dweller in the inaccessible mountain fastness of Jam Tirnova, the deathless guardian of the royal race of this island?"