officer just starting for the campaign: 'Well, then,' she continued, 'keep out of danger. If your troop wishes to charge into a safe place, let 'em. _You_ don't want brevet rank, or any of that nonsense, I hope. Make as much bluster and row as you like, but for Heaven's sake keep out of harm's way.... You need not write to me every day, but every third or fourth day, for the postage is serious. If you should happen to kill any Sikhs, search them, and pull down their back hair; that's where they carry their money and jewels and valuables. A sergeant of the 3rd Dragoons, like a good husband, has sent his wife down a lot of gold mohurs and some precious stones that he found tied up in the hair of a Sikh officer. And, by the by, you may as well leave me your watch. You can always learn the time of day from somebody; and if anything happened to you, it would be sold by the Committee of Adjustment, and would fetch a mere nothing.' This is unquestionably a grotesque caricature; yet the ladies of mixed parentage were quaint and singular persons in the India of sixty years ago. As Arnold could hardly have failed to read _The Wetherbys_ before he wrote _Oakfield_, the book may have suggested to him the plan of going over the same ground upon a higher plane of thought and treatment. The two books stand as records of a state of society that has now entirely passed away, and from their perusal we may conclude that, among the many radical changes wrought upon India by the sweeping cyclone of the great Mutiny, not the least of them has been a thorough reformation of the native army.