l, it has its
advantages, and chief among them is the climate. It's delightful in the
cold weather and pleasant in the hot."

"By Jove, it is indeed, sir! It's like Heaven after the heat in the
Plains below. I don't know how I lived through it coming across India."

"The rainy season is the hardest to bear. We have five months of it and
over three hundred inches of rain during them. One never sees a strange
face then--not that we ever do have many visitors here at any time.
Still, you'll like your C.O., and Burke the doctor is a capital fellow.
Here we are."

He turned in through a narrow gate leading to a pretty though neglected
garden in which stood the Mess, a long, single-storied building raised
on piles. On the broad wooden verandah to which a flight of steps led
from the ground two men were reclining in long chairs reading old
newspapers. On seeing Dermot and his companion they rose, and the
Colonel introduced Frank. They shook hands with him and gave him a
hearty welcome, which, coming on the top of the Dermot's, cheered the
subaltern exceedingly and for the time made him forget the circumstances
of his coming.

"It's mighty glad I am to see you here, Wargrave," said Burke, the
doctor, in a mellow brogue, "aven av it's only to have someone living in
the Mess wid me. The Major there lives in solitary state in his little
bungalow; and I'm all alone here at night wid _shaitans_ (devils) and
wild beasts walking on the verandah."

"What? Has that panther been prowling round the Mess again?" asked the
Political Officer.

"Faith! and he has that. Sure, I heard him sniffing at me door last
night. I wish to the Powers ye'd shoot him, sir."

"I can't get him. I've tried often enough."

"Troth! and it's waking up one fine morning I'll be to find he's made a
meal av me. Keep your door shut at night, Wargrave. Merrick, who lived
in the room you'll have, forgot to do it once and the divil nearly had
him."

"Is that really a fact?" asked Frank, delighted at the thought of having
come to a place with such possibilities of sport.

"Yes; we're plagued by a brute of a panther that prowls about the
station at night, jumps the wall of the Fort and carries off the sepoys'
dogs, and has actually entered rooms here in the Mess. He has killed
several Bhuttia children on the hills around here. Nobody can ever get a
shot at him. He's too cunning. Will you have a drink, Colonel?" said
Hunt.

The Political Officer thanked him