service, where he is entirely in his element. His father died two
years ago, and I believe he came into a good property at home. Everyone
expected he would have thrown up his appointment, but it made no
difference to him, and he just went on as before, working as if he had
to depend entirely on the service."

"I can quite understand that," Isobel said, "to a really earnest man
a life of usefulness here must be vastly preferable to living at home
without anything to do or any object in life."

"Well, perhaps so, my dear, and in theory that is, no doubt, the case;
but practically, I fancy you would find nineteen men out of twenty, even
if they are what you call earnest men, retire from the ranks of hard
workers if they come into a nice property. By the way, you must come in
here this evening. There is a juggler in the station, and Mr. Hunter has
told him to come round. The servants say the man is a very celebrated
juggler, one of the best in India, and as the girls have never seen
anything better than the ordinary itinerant conjurers, my husband has
arranged for him to come in here, and we have been sending notes round
asking everyone to come in. We have sent one round to your place, but
you must have come out before the chit arrived."

"Oh, I should like that very much!" Isobel said. "Two or three men came
to our bungalow at Cawnpore and did some conjuring, but it was nothing
particular; but uncle says some of them do wonderful things--things that
he cannot account for at all. That was one of the things I read about at
school, and thought I should like to see, more than anything in India.
When I was at school we went in a body, two or three times, to see
conjurers when they came to Cheltenham. Of course I did not understand
the things they did, and they seemed wonderful to me, but I know there
are people who can explain them, and that they are only tricks; but
I have read accounts of things done by jugglers in India that seemed
utterly impossible to explain--really a sort of magic."

"I have heard a good many arguments about it," Mrs. Hunter said; "and
a good many people, especially those who have seen most of them, are
of opinion that many of the feats of the Indian jugglers cannot be
explained by any natural laws we know of. I have seen some very curious
things myself, but the very fact that I did not understand how they were
done was no proof they could not be explained; certainly two of their
commonest tricks, th