was a poor sort of life, anyway.

When the party broke up, Mrs. Fox elected to walk home as a tribute to
the glorious moonlight, and Jack was commandeered to act as her escort.
It was a good opportunity for the lady to show that renegade, Master
Bobby Smart, that he was not indispensable. His yawn at dinner deserved
a reprisal.

Bobby Smart, however, was not slow to profit by his release from escort
duty, and wasted no time in pleasing himself. "I'll drop you home,
Deare," he said cheerfully, "and we'll have a whisky-and-soda at your
bungalow before you turn in."

"I should wait till I'm asked," said Tommy lighting a cigarette and
dropping the match in a flower-pot on the verandah.

"I knew you were pining to have me round for a _buk_."[9]

[Footnote 9: Chat.]

"You can come in if you promise to go home by midnight," Tommy
condescended. "I'll not be kept up later."

"On the stroke. That's a jolly good whisky you have. I was going to send
to Kellner's for the same brand today, but forgot."

Tommy climbed into Smart's trap and consented to be driven home. His
hospitality and Jack's was proverbial at Muktiarbad.

CHAPTER IX

A MOMENT OF RELAXATION

On leaving the Brights' dinner-party, Captain Dalton made his way to his
car and sped out upon the moonlit road. An appreciable hesitation at the
gate ended in his taking a course in an opposite direction to that in
which lay Sombari and his patient.

A misty peacefulness of smoke and quietude brooded over the Station.
Darkened bungalows looked like sightless monsters dead to the world, and
the silent lanes were alive alone with fireflies scintillating like
myriad stars in a firmament of leaves. At Muktiarbad, there was little
else for the English residents to do after the Club had closed its door
at nine, but eat, drink, and sleep. Theatres never patronised _mafasil_
stations, and cinemas had not yet found their way so far into rural
Bengal. In the bazaar also, which was strictly the native quarter of the
town, the night was silent save for intermittent tom-tomming on the
favourite _dholuk_,[10] or, here and there, the murmur of gossiping in
doorways. Behind mat walls men gambled or slept, and by the pale light
of the moon could be seen the smoke of burning cow-dung--kindled for the
destruction of mosquitoes--curling upward from the clusters of thatched
huts, and filling the air with opalescent mist.

[Footnote 10: Indian drum.]

But Captain Dalton ha