arrives from a remote police-station a corpse and a confessing murderer. The corpse has to be sent to the native doctor for a post-mortem examination, with such information as the assistant can obtain from the police reports as to the nature of the injuries which caused death. This must be done promptly—for corpses will not keep, in fact, they are often very unpleasant when they reach the assistant’s office. Nor will the murderer’s confession keep; it must be taken down at once, while the criminal is still in a state of awe and repentance, and faint with hunger. The police are careful not to let a confessing criminal have too much to eat until he has repeated his confession voluntarily and entirely of his own free will, before the assistant. So, however weary the assistant may be, he must solemnly admonish the prisoner not to confess unless he likes to do so, and then record what the unfortunate creature has to state. When this is over, he hopes to get away, but there is an emergent application for postage-stamps which he does not dare postpone, and he has to count them out from the chest in his little murky den of a treasury, and check all the entries in the account-books before he can close them with a correct balance of the stamps still in store. At last he may gain the privacy of his own rooms, and the company of his sole and faithful companion, his dog. But even then his troubles are not always at an end. Perhaps an alarm of fire is given from the neighbouring village. The sky is red with flames, and dense clouds of smoke fill the air. The assistant quickly mounts his horse, and dashes off to the scene, to try and control the crowd, and to direct the efforts of those few who seem to have their senses left, in attempting to extinguish the flames, or prevent the conflagration from spreading. He will be lucky if he succeeds in doing any good. He will be very lucky if he escapes without some personal injury, and he will probably meet with execrations instead of thanks from those people whose huts have had to be pulled down in order to prevent the fire from spreading.