s bustee. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa--poor little
Bisesa--back again. He has lost her in the City, where each man's house
is as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens
into Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up.

But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort
of man.

There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, caused
by a riding-strain, in the right leg.

IN ERROR.

They burnt a corpse upon the sand--
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging boats
That beat from Zanzibar.
Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise.
Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyes!

Salsette Boat-Song.

There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more
often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinks
secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never seen to drink.

This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it. Moriarty's
case was that exception.

He was a Civil Engineer, and the Government, very kindly, put him quite
by himself in an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk to and a
great deal of work to do. He did his work well in the four years he
was utterly alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and solitary
drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and
haggard than the dead-alive life had any right to make him. You know the
saying that a man who has been alone in the jungle for more than a
year is never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty's
queerness of manner and moody ways to the solitude, and said it showed
how Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had built
himself the plinth of a very god reputation in the bridge-dam-girder
line. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking steps
to undermine that reputation with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little
nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution
and a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like a
sick camel in the district, as better men have done before him.

Government ordered him to Simla after he had come out of the desert;
and he went up meaning to try for a post then vacant. That season, Mrs.
Reiver--perhaps you will remember her--was in the height of her power,
and many men lay under her yoke. Everything bad tha