ol," a tender of goats, did in time appear, but there was no
hurry; the sugar-cane was sweet and purple and the sun warm.

The Englishman lay out at high noon on the crest of a rolling upland
crowned with rock, and heard, as a loafer had told him he would hear,
the "set of the day," which is as easily discernible as the change of
tone between the rising and the falling tide. At a certain hour the
impetus of the morning dies out, and all things, living and inanimate,
turn their thoughts to the prophecy of the coming night. The little
wandering breezes drop for a time, and, when they blow afresh, bring the
message. The "set of the day," as the loafer said, has changed, the
machinery is beginning to run down, the unseen tides of the air are
falling. This moment of change can only be felt in the open and in touch
with the earth, and once discovered, seems to place the finder in deep
accord and fellowship with all things on earth. Perhaps this is why the
genuine loafer, though "frequently drunk," is "always polite to the
stranger," and shows such a genial tolerance towards the weaknesses of
mankind, black, white, or brown.

In the evening when the jackals were scuttling across the roads and the
cranes had gone to roost, came Deoli the desolate, and an unpleasant
meeting. Six days away from his kind had bred in a Cockney heart a
great desire to see a fellow-subject. An elaborate loaf through the
cantonment--fifteen minutes' walk from end to end--showed only one
distant dog-cart and a small English child with an ayah. There was grass
in the soldierly straight roads, and some of the cross-cuts had never
been used at all since the days when the cantonment had been first laid
out. In the western corner lay the cemetery--the only carefully tended
and newly whitewashed thing in this God-forgotten place. Some years ago
a man had said good-by to the Englishman; adding cheerily: "We shall
meet again. The world's a very little place y' know."

His prophecy was a true one, for the two met indeed, but the prophet was
lying in Deoli Cemetery near the well, which is decorated so
ecclesiastically with funeral urns.

XIX

COMES BACK TO THE RAILWAY, AFTER REFLECTIONS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE
EMPIRE; AND SO HOME AGAIN, WITH APOLOGY TO ALL WHO HAVE READ THUS FAR.

In the morning the tonga rattled past Deoli Cemetery into the open,
where the Deoli Irregulars were drilling. They marked the beginning of
civilisation and white shirts;