recommended by the captain of the Indiaman we came home in. I think the country-people looked on us as a set of wizards, Franks and I with our brown faces and queer nankeen clothes, and his boy who couldn’t speak English. The boy cooked for us, and we managed to get along somehow. I went to school, and hated the place, the lessons, the usher, and the boys about equally. My only happy time was when I could get home to Franks and talk Hindustani again. I suppose there must have been kind people who would have been good to us if we had let them, but we were both as wild and shy as jungly ponies, and they seemed to give it up in despair. I think the general opinion was that Franks had sold himself to the devil, and was bringing me up to follow in his footsteps, and yet, except my father, I never knew a more honourable, simple soul. Well, the years passed on, and we began to feel that the end of our exile was at hand. When I was fifteen we might come back to India, my father had said. And so I did go back, but not poor Franks. Our last winter was a frightfully severe one, and he fell ill. He gave me full directions about going back, sent messages to my father, and died. The clergyman of the place was kind, and it was only by piecing together what the people said as they whispered and nudged one another when I passed that I learned they grudged my dear old friend a grave in consecrated ground. However, the parson put that right, and found some one who would take me up to London and secure a passage back to India for me. This time I was so desperately lonely that I made friends among the youths of my own age on board as much as they would let me. They thought me rather a swell, travelling with a boy of my own, and only a few of them turned up their noses at me because my father was nothing but a commandant of black irregulars, and lived away among the natives. There were several ladies on board, but I never attempted to go near them. I should as soon have thought of trying to make the acquaintance of so many angels. When we reached Calcutta, I spent only a few days in the town, and hurried up-country as fast as I could, for I heard tales of my father that made me anxious. He had resigned the command of his regiment two or three years before, on learning that it was to be assimilated with the rest of the irregular cavalry, and people said that he had become quite a native in his way of living. Very few had ever seen him, for when travellers came in his direction, he had a way of leaving his house and servants at their disposal, and retiring to a garden-house at some distance, where he shut himself up till they were gone. Well, I found him, and the pleasure of seeing me seemed to give him new life for a while. He took me out shooting, and taught me all I know of _shikar_. But he was not satisfied; he would not have me live on among natives when he was gone, and suddenly he astonished me by