Once or twice she looked back to the cantonment, and murmured to herself how strange it was to think that he should be there--he, after all! The civilians' bungalows were built on the little hills, where a puff of wind might be caught; but the barracks and sepoy lines occupied the centre of an arid and unsheltered plain, where never came a breath of wind to fan the withered cheek, or to drive away the fever and sickness for ever lingering there. As usual, the _site_ of the cantonments was a blunder, and there our soldiers were doomed to languish, swelter, and perish by cholera or sunstroke, for the barracks had been built, and being so, had to be occupied. "Poor Brown is down with cholera this morning." "Poor Brown! another told off to die. There are four doctors with him; but all in Europe couldn't give him another day in this world." Such were usually the first morning greetings in Mirzapatam when the bugles blew "the assembly." "And Smith of the 1st Bengal died about gun fire." "But that trump, Thorne, the chaplain, never left him till, with his own hands, he had closed his eyes." "When is the funeral?" "In orders, for sunset--the cool of the evening; _cool_ at Mirzapatam!" "Would Wilmot escape, or be going forth soon on a gun-carriage, as so many went, from that horrible barrack!" thought Clare, as she rode on towards the Jumna, where she knew the country grew beautiful; and she shivered as she thought of the life she led now. Though her husband was chaplain to a military station, officers seldom or never, except when on duty, entered his bungalow; so the male visitors there consisted only of eurasian and native catechists, colporteurs, and teachers. To Clare it was an intolerable existence, and as she saw, when fever abated, the gay and happy lives led by the other ladies of the garrison, she repined sorely, and thinking of all these things, she rode slowly toward the Jumna. Down from the Ghaut of Etawah the river was rolling in its beauty amid the most wondrous greenery in the world. There were oleanders (the pride of the jungles) sending forth their delicious perfumes from clusters of pink and white blossoms; the baubool, with its bells of gold, the sensation plant, and thousand others all growing together, while the _byahs_, or crested sparrows, looked like clouds of gold as they floated in flocks over these and the waters of the river. Yet, lovely though the scene, the English girl, as she reined up her horse, thought she would rather have looked upon the Weald of her native Kent! The same idea was in the heart of another, who was slowly approaching her, an officer in undress, with pith-helmet and loose white patrol jacket. He urged his horse close to Clare, and a little exclamation escaped her.