ous 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 fiancee 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 employe
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.

The three chums soon made Shafto feel at ease and at home; they were
lively companions, too. Roscoe was a capital mimic, and kept his
company in roars of laughter. FitzGerald drew notable caricatures and
could tell a story with the best. "The MacNab," who had a certain dry
wit, took the stranger firmly in hand with regard to finance--namely,
the furnishing of his room and other expenditure.

"Bide a wee; go slow at first," he advised. "Just hire a few sticks
from Whiteway and Laidlaw, and wait your chance for picking up bargains
at Balthasar's auction rooms; anyway, you don't want much. A bed, a
couple of chairs, table, washstand and tub. I have a chest of drawers
I can let you have cheap. In the rains the pictures fall out of their
frames, the glue melts, rugs are eaten by white ants in a few
hours--and your boots grow mushrooms."

"That's a cheerful look out!" exclaimed