tor saw no wrong here--got most royally and Britishly drunk
on Madeira that had twice rounded the Cape. But Lucia fell sick, and the
doctor--he who went home after seven years with five lakhs and a half,
and a corner of this vast graveyard to his account--said that it was a
pukka or putrid fever, and the system required strengthening. So they
fed Lucia on hot curries, and mulled wine worked up with spirits and
fortified with spices, for nearly a week; at the end of which time she
closed her eyes on the weary river and the Fort for ever, and a gallant,
with a turn for _belles-lettres_, wept openly as men did then and had no
shame of it, and composed the verses above set, and thought himself a
neat hand at the pen--stap his vitals! But the factor was so grieved
that he could write nothing at all--could only spend his money--and he
counted his wealth by lakhs--on a sumptuous grave. A little later on he
took comfort, and when the next batch came out--

But this has nothing whatever to do with the story of Lucia, the
virtuous maid, the faithful wife. Her ghost went to a big Calcutta
Powder Ball that very night, and looked very beautiful. I met her.

AMONG THE RAILWAY FOLK

CHAPTER I

MAR., 1888

A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT.

Jamalpur is the headquarters of the East India Railway. This in itself
is not a startling statement. The wonder begins with the exploration of
Jamalpur, which is a station entirely made by, and devoted to, the use
of those untiring servants of the public, the railway folk. They have
towns of their own at Toondla and Assensole; a sun-dried sanitarium at
Bandikui; and Howrah, Ajmir, Allahabad, Lahore, and Pindi know their
colonies. But Jamalpur is unadulteratedly "Railway," and he who has
nothing to do with the E. I. Railway in some shape or another feels a
stranger and an interloper. Running always east and southerly, the train
carries him from the torments of the northwest into the wet, woolly
warmth of Bengal, where may be found the hothouse heat that has ruined
the temper of the good people of Calcutta. The land is fat and greasy
with good living, and the wealth of the bodies of innumerable dead
things; and here--just above Mokameh--may be seen fields stretching,
without stick, stone, or bush to break the view, from the railway line
to the horizon.

Up-country innocents must look at the map to learn that Jamalpur is near
the top left-hand corner of the big loop that the E. I. R. throws o