e army and returned home. He was heartily tired of
the long inaction. When the regiment was stationed at Madras, life was
very pleasant; but a considerable portion of his time was spent at out
stations, where the duties were very light, and there was nothing to
break the monotony of camp life. He received letters regularly from
his mother, who gave him full details of their home life.

The first that he received merely announced their safe arrival in
England. The second was longer and more interesting. They had had no
difficulty in discovering the address of Annie's father, and on
writing to him, he had immediately come up to town. He had lost his
wife, on his voyage home from India, and was overjoyed at the
discovery of his daughter, and at her return to England.

"He is," Dick's mother wrote, "very much broken in health. Annie
behaved very nicely. Poor child, it was only natural that, after what
you did for her, and our being all that time with her, the thought of
leaving us for her parent, of whom she had no recollection, was a
great grief. However, I talked it over with her, many times, and
pointed out to her that her first duty was to the father who had been
so many years deprived of her, and that, although there was no reason
why she should not manifest affection for us, she must not allow him
to think, for a moment, that she was not as pleased to see him as he
was to welcome her. She behaved beautifully when her father arrived,
and when he had been in the house five minutes, and spoke of the death
of his wife, his bitter regret that she had not lived to see Annie
restored to them, the loneliness of his life and how it would be
brightened now that she was again with him, his words so touched her
that she threw herself into his arms, and sobbed out that she would do
all she could to make his life happy. He had, of course, received the
letter we had written to him from Tripataly, and quite pained me by
the gratitude he showed for what he called my kindness to his
daughter.

"He said that, by this post, he should write to endeavour to express
some of his feelings to you. Annie went away with him the next day, to
a place he has bought near Plymouth. He has promised to let us have
her for a month, every year, and we have promised to go down for the
same time, every summer, to stay with her. He asks numberless
questions about you, which neither I nor Annie are ever tired of
answering. Even with a mother's natural par