very grateful for my attentions, and hoped at some future
time--this with a malicious twinkle of her gray eyes--to
show the 'Bahadoor' that she had not forgotten them. So you
see there are lights as well as shadows in the life of a
rebel."

I omit a portion here, and come to the conclusion, which was evidently
added in haste.

"'Up and away!' is the order. We are off to Bithoor. The
Nana there--a staunch friend, as it was thought, of British
rule--has declared for independence, and as there is plenty
of go in him, look out for something 'sensational.' You
wouldn't believe how, amidst all these stirring scenes, I
long for news--from what people call home--of Rocksley and
Uncle G., and the dear Soph; but more from that villa
beside the Italian lake. I'd give a canvas bag that I carry
at my girdle with a goodly stock of pearls, sapphires, and
rubies, for one evening's diary of that cottage!

"If all go on as well and prosperously as I hope for, I have
not the least objection, but rather a wish that you would
tell the world where I am, and what I am doing. Linked with
failure, I'd rather keep dark; but as a sharer in a great
success, I burn to make it known through the length and
breadth of the land that I am alive and well, and ready to
acquit a number of personal obligations, if not to the very
fellows who injured me, to their friends, relatives, and
cousins, to the third generation. Tell them, Algy, 'A duel's
amang ye, cutting throats,' and add, if you like, that he
writes himself your attached friend,

"Harry Calvert?"

This letter, delivered in some mysterious manner to the bankers at
Calcutta, was duly forwarded, and in time reached the hands of Alfred
Drayton, who confided its contents to a few "friends" of Calvert's--men
who felt neither astonished nor shocked at the intelligence--shifty
fellows, with costly tastes, who would live on society somehow,
reputably, if they could--dishonourably if they must; and who all agreed
that "Old Calvert," as they called him--he was younger than most of
them--had struck out a very clever line, and a far more remunerative
one than "rooking young Griffins at billiards"--such being, in their
estimation, the one other alternative which fete had to offer him.
This was all the publicity, however, Drayton gave to his friend's
achievements. Somehow