me; but as nothing he said could be proved, the Amir refused to listen, whereupon the Kotwal clapped the man in prison as the best means of preventing his tongue wagging about his own part in the matter of getting up a case against me, and some few weeks later had his throat cut at night, and the body disposed of. Of the sequel I knew nothing for some months, but eventually a man told me the particulars related to him by a Kotwali sepoy, of how this sepoy had been one of those appointed to cut the servant’s throat late one night, and how the body had been stripped of its clothing, and then thrown into a ditch and covered with earth. He said the man’s screams were fearful when he saw they had come to kill him, and, knowing his timid nature, I can believe it. The Hindustani servants I had in Kabul all swindled more or less, and generally more toward the end of their service, when I was forced to dismiss them and get others. I had little time to attend to household affairs, except at night, and then I was, as a rule, too tired to go into matters properly, and it is not at night that one can thoroughly see to such things, and I had perforce to accept their statements, such as the quantity of cattle and horse food bought and used, without knowing whether the animals had received all that was charged for, and being morally certain they had not; so the servants, seeing the position, took advantage of it, as natives ever will. Thrashing servants does little good, and it besides engenders in them a spirit of retaliation, which shows itself in small things, such as forgetting trivial household duties, while pretending to do their utmost to please the sahib, and though these offences are so trivial, yet when one has other worries which are irritating they loom large, and are very trying to bear. In retaliation of this sort the natives are past masters, and mention of the small duty forgotten sends them into apparent fits of abject contrition. Both the servant and one’s self know it is all humbug, but there is nothing of malice aforethought to be proved, so the servant retires gracefully with, when far enough off, a smug smile, while his master stands and fumes at his impotence to punish without losing dignity. Those who do not know the native, and he seems to be much the same in all Eastern countries, may think that they would find means of counter-retaliation, but rather than let matters go so far as that, it is better to get rid of the servant and try a new man, and this has its drawback, for one who changes servants frequently will soon find it difficult to get a good one, and in native servants there are many degrees of quality. The general experience of Englishmen in the East seems to be much the same, except that some fare worse with their servants than others, and if those who do not understand the native were present on some occasions, it is extremely probable they would think the