ards he went to Calcutta, and in that city for a time was
lost to sight. He emerged one afternoon upon the racecourse, and while
standing on the grass in front of the Club stand, before the horses
cantered down to the starting post, he saw an elderly man, heavy of build
but still erect, approach him with a smile.

Shere Ali would have avoided that man if he could. He hesitated,
unwilling to recognise and unable quite to ignore. And while he
hesitated, the elderly man held out his hand.

"We know each other, surely. I used to see you at Eton, didn't I? I used
to run down to see a young friend of mine and a friend of yours, Dick
Linforth. I am Colonel Dewes."

"Yes, I remember," said Shere Ali with some embarrassment; and he took
the Colonel's outstretched hand. "I thought that you had left India
for good."

"So did I," said Dewes. "But I was wrong." He turned and walked along by
the side of Shere Ali. "I don't know why exactly, but I did not find life
in London so very interesting."

Shere Ali looked quickly at the Colonel.

"Yet you had looked forward to retiring and going home?" he asked with a
keen interest. Colonel Dewes gave himself up to reflection. He sounded
the obscurities of his mind. It was a practice to which he was not
accustomed. He drew himself erect, his eyes became fixed, and with a
puckered forehead he thought.

"I suppose so," he said. "Yes, certainly. I remember. One used to buck at
mess of the good time one would have, the comfort of one's club and one's
rooms, and the rest of it. It isn't comfortable in India, is it? Not
compared with England. Your furniture, your house, and all that sort of
thing. You live as if you were a lodger, don't you know, and it didn't
matter for a little while whether you were comfortable or not. The little
while slips on and on, and suddenly you find you have been in the country
twenty or thirty years, and you have never taken the trouble to be
comfortable. It's like living in a dak-bungalow."

The Colonel halted and pulled at his moustache. He had made a discovery.
He had reflected not without result. "By George!" he said, "that's
right. Let me put it properly now, as a fellow would put it in a book,
if he hit upon anything as good." He framed his aphorism in different
phrases before he was satisfied with it. Then he delivered himself of it
with pride.

"At the bottom of the Englishman's conception of life in India, there is
always the idea of a dak-bungalow,"