ys best and leads to Simla. Strickland
was far too fond of his wife, just then, to break his word, but it was
a sore trial to him; for the streets and the bazars, and the sounds in
them, were full of meaning to Strickland, and these called to him to
come back and take up his wanderings and his discoveries. Some day, I
will tell you how he broke his promise to help a friend. That was long
since, and he has, by this time, been nearly spoilt for what he would
call shikar. He is forgetting the slang, and the beggar's cant, and the
marks, and the signs, and the drift of the undercurrents, which, if a
man would master, he must always continue to learn.

But he fills in his Departmental returns beautifully.

YOKED WITH AN UNBELIEVER.

I am dying for you, and you are dying for another.

Punjabi Proverb.

When the Gravesend tender left the P. & O. steamer for Bombay and went
back to catch the train to Town, there were many people in it crying.
But the one who wept most, and most openly was Miss Agnes Laiter. She
had reason to cry, because the only man she ever loved--or ever could
love, so she said--was going out to India; and India, as every one
knows, is divided equally between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and
sepoys.

Phil Garron, leaning over the side of the steamer in the rain, felt very
unhappy too; but he did not cry. He was sent out to "tea." What "tea"
meant he had not the vaguest idea, but fancied that he would have to
ride on a prancing horse over hills covered with tea-vines, and draw a
sumptuous salary for doing so; and he was very grateful to his uncle
for getting him the berth. He was really going to reform all his slack,
shiftless ways, save a large proportion of his magnificent salary
yearly, and, in a very short time, return to marry Agnes Laiter. Phil
Garron had been lying loose on his friends' hands for three years, and,
as he had nothing to do, he naturally fell in love. He was very nice;
but he was not strong in his views and opinions and principles, and
though he never came to actual grief his friends were thankful when
he said good-bye, and went out to this mysterious "tea" business near
Darjiling. They said:--"God bless you, dear boy! Let us never see your
face again,"--or at least that was what Phil was given to understand.

When he sailed, he was very full of a great plan to prove himself
several hundred times better than any one had give