, for it is in Peshawar, and Umballah, and Korti and Fort Pearson
that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind
them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no
frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever
show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped.

This, then, as well as the waters which join us to the world, has done
something to tinge us with romance. For when so many have their loved
ones over the seas, walking amid hillmen's bullets, or swamp malaria,
where death is sudden and distance great, then mind communes with mind,
and strange stories arise of dream, presentiment or vision, where the
mother sees her dying son, and is past the first bitterness of her grief
ere the message comes which should have broken the news. The learned
have of late looked into the matter and have even labelled it with a
name; but what can we know more of it save that a poor stricken
soul, when hard-pressed and driven, can shoot across the earth some
ten-thousand-mile-distant picture of its trouble to the mind which is
most akin to it. Far be it from me to say that there lies no such power
within us, for of all things which the brain will grasp the last will
be itself; but yet it is well to be very cautious over such matters, for
once at least I have known that which was within the laws of nature seem
to be far upon the further side of them.

John Vansittart was the younger partner of the firm of Hudson and
Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon, three-quarters
Dutchman by descent, but wholly English in his sympathies. For years I
had been his agent in London, and when in '72 he came over to England
for a three months' holiday, he turned to me for the introductions which
would enable him to see something of town and country life. Armed with
seven letters he left my offices, and for many weeks scrappy notes from
different parts of the country let me know that he had found favour
in the eyes of my friends. Then came word of his engagement to Emily
Lawson, of a cadet branch of the Hereford Lawsons, and at the very tail
of the first flying rumour the news of his absolute marriage, for the
wooing of a wanderer must be short, and the days were already crowding
on towards the date when he must be upon his homeward journey. They
were to return together to Colombo in one of the firm's own thousand-ton
barque-rigged sailing ships, and this was to be their princely