se troubles came on. You see how
differently she walks. She has quite lost that elastic step of hers, but
I dare say that is a good deal due to her walking with bare feet instead
of in English boots--boots have a good deal to do with a walk. Look at
the difference between the walk of a gentleman who has always worn well
fitting boots and that of a countryman who has gone about in thick iron
shod boots all his life. Breeding goes for something, no doubt, and
alters a man's walk just as it alters a horse's gait."

Bathurst could not help laughing at the Doctor dropping into his usual
style of discussing things.

"Are your feet feeling tender, Isobel?" the latter asked cheerfully, as
he overtook those in front.

"No, Doctor," she said, with a smile; "I don't know that I was ever
thankful for dust before, but I am now; it is so soft that it is like
walking on a carpet, but, of course, it feels very strange."

"You have only to fancy, my dear, that you are by the seaside, walking
down from your bathing machine across the sands; once get that in your
mind and you will get perfectly comfortable."

"It requires too great a stretch of the imagination, Doctor, to think
for a moment, in this sweltering heat, that I am enjoying a sea breeze
on our English coast. It is silly, of course, to give it even a thought,
when one is accustomed to see almost every woman without shoes. I think
I should mind it more than I do if my feet were not stained. I don't
know why, but I should. But please don't talk about it. I try to forget
it, and to fancy that I am really a native."

They met but few people on the road. Those they did meet passed them
with the usual salutation. There was nothing strange in a party of
peasants passing along the road. They might have been at work at
Cawnpore, and be now returning to their native village to get away from
the troubles there. After it became dark they went into a clump of trees
half a mile distant from a village they could see along the road.

"I will go in," Rujub said, "and bring some grain, and hear what the
news is."

He returned in an hour. "The English have taken Dong," he said; "the
news came in two hours ago. There has been some hard fighting; the
Sepoys resisted stoutly at the village, even advancing beyond the
inclosures to meet the British. They were driven back by the artillery
and rifle fire, but held the village for some time before they were
turned out. There was a stand made at t