The chummery to which Douglas Shafto had been introduced was a rambling old bungalow, and the edge of the Cantonment, sufficiently close to offices and work. Although by no means modern, it boasted both electric light and fans, and the rent was fairly moderate; the landlord, Ah Kin, a Chinaman, called for it punctually on the first of every month, but closed his slits of eyes to various necessary repairs. Among the three chums already established was Roscoe, a dark, well-set up man of five or six and thirty, with a clean-shaven, eager face, artistic hands, and a pair of clever eyes. Roscoe had been in turn a junior master, a journalist and actor. Dissatisfied and unsatisfactory in these situations, his friends had found him an opening where he would be at too great a distance to trouble them—in short, a billet in a Burma oil company in Rangoon. Amazing to relate, the post suited him and the rolling stone came to a standstill; well educated and intellectual, endowed with a curious eye and a critical mind, he was anxious to see, mark and learn the life of his present surroundings. Out of business hours, Roscoe devoted himself to this task with such whole-souled enthusiasm, that at times he actually imagined that he had his finger upon the pulse of this strange, new world. The oldest and least prosperous of the fraternity, his companions liked him and spoke of Roscoe as “a queer fish, but a rare good sort.” Patrick Ormond FitzGerald, police officer, a genial native of County Cork, was about thirty years of age, handsome, generous and hot-headed, who enjoyed every kind of scrap and sport—including chasing dacoits and smugglers. He diffused an atmosphere of good humour and confidence, was universally popular and invariably in debt. Chum number three, James MacNab, hailed from “Bonnie Scotland”—a spare, sandy, canny individual, who, far from being in debt, was carefully amassing large savings. He had a pretty fiancée in Crieff, who sent him weekly budgets and the _Scotsman_. He owned a sound, steady ambition, and seldom made an unconsidered remark. “Mac” was an employé in the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, where he was rapidly rising, so to speak, to the surface. Each “chum” had a room to himself, but they took their meals together in a wide, open veranda, and were catered for by a fat Madrassi butler, who did not rob them unduly, seeing that his accounts had to be inspected and passed by thrifty “Mac,” who ruthlessly eliminated all imaginative items. In their large compound their cook kept game fowl—long-legged fighting cocks from Shanghai—and other poultry, including the curly feathered freaks of Aracan. Here FitzGerald stabled his horses—a capital pair, trust an Irishman for that!—and Roscoe, a stout elderly Shan, ironically nicknamed “Later On.” MacNab rode a bicycle; a useful mount that required neither oats nor groom.