In 1891 I was staying in Agra, at the hotel, with my friend of the Delhi incident. A certain Major Pulford, who had come to Agra to race some ponies, divided us at the _table d'hote_. He and I had been neighbours for two or three days, when he asked me carelessly one evening what _I_ had been doing that afternoon, as my friend confessed to having taken a "day off." Now I had spent the afternoon at the Taj, and had made many inquiries about the tradition that this building had once been turned into a hospital. No one knew anything about it. One old Hindoo, evidently thinking I wished him to say "_Yes_," remembered hearing that this _had_ been the case "_about eighty years ago_." This last artistic touch of accuracy was fatal to his _bona fides_, and I turned away in disgust. So I told Major Pulford my story, and we laughed over the well-known fact that a Hindoo of that class always tries to find out what you wish him to say, and _then says it!_ Major Pulford asked why I was so keen on the subject. "Because a very old friend of mine was badly wounded at Agra during the Mutiny, and from a child I have had the impression that he was nursed in the Taj." "No," he answered. "I am sure the Taj was never used as a hospital, but I think the Pearl Mosque may have been. This would account for the mistake, probably." Now the point in this incident is the fact that I _had not mentioned my friend's name to Major Pulford_. Had the name been a more distinctive one, I might have mentioned it, although realising that Major Pulford was too young a man to have known anything about the Mutiny at first hand. We talked casually on the subject for a few minutes, and then he said: "Of course, I was a baby at the time, but I have read and heard any amount about it, naturally. _My_ boyish hero was a fellow named Jones of the 9th Lancers, who was so awfully plucky in their celebrated charge, when surprised by the enemy on the Agra parade-ground. I know nothing about the fellow except what I have read. I believe he is alive still, but they say he was almost cut to pieces then." "_That is the friend whom I thought had been nursed in the Taj_," was my astonished answer. Major Pulford's delight was unbounded to have come by so strange a coincidence even thus near to the hero of his youth. For myself, I recognised that I had sat next to the only man, probably then in India, who could have given me the accurate and precise details of the whole affair! "I know every inch of the ground, and just where it all happened," he said eagerly. "Do let me drive you and your friend over there to-morrow in my buggy, and I will point out every detail." He did so next day, leaving me with the most vivid impression of the scene of my friend's gallant fight for life, against such overwhelming odds. That he should still be alive and active--nearly fifty years later--seems little short of a miracle! CHAPTER VI SWEDEN AND RUSSIA, 1892