for much grumbling. Nisbet was a quiet,
inoffensive man, who found perpetual occupation and solace in writing,
reading, re-reading and annotating innumerable documents, of which he
seemed to carry a whole library about with him, but his contentment was
powerless to infect his companions. Captain Cowper was low-spirited
owing to the parting from his wife, for after inducing Sir Edmund and
Lady Antony to postpone their return to the hills for two days that she
might see him off, Marian had disgraced herself and her parents by
making a scene--though happily not in public--at her husband's
departure. Her frantic entreaties to him not to go, or if he must go,
to take her with him, her dire forebodings of evil, had made it very
hard for him to leave her; and when neither her father's anger, nor
Lady Cinnamond's warnings that she would do herself harm, were able to
quiet her sobs, Captain Cowper had been obliged to tear himself away
from her clinging hands without a proper farewell. It was no comfort
to picture her lonely misery in the hills, with no one but Honour, of
whose tenderness he had the very lowest opinion, to act as confidant,
and her husband spent many hours daily in writing letters, and making
sketches of any object of interest that offered itself, for her benefit.

Little as he had in common with his two companions, Gerrard dreaded the
moment when he would step ashore on the left bank of the Bari, thence
to strike southwards and take up his new work at Habshiabad. The
absolute isolation from men of his own colour which this would entail
was not a prospect he could face with any pleasure. From Charteris he
would now be separated by the whole breadth of Agpur, unless they both
journeyed far to the south-west, where for a short distance the
boundaries of Darwan and Habshiabad ran along opposite banks of the
river Tindar, while of Nisbet and Cowper in Agpur itself it was
unlikely that he would see anything, as the frontier dispute with which
they were to deal concerned the other side of the state. Moreover, it
was impossible not to feel that his work had been taken out of his
hands and given to them to do. Whatever the situation in Agpur might
be, he had contributed, however involuntarily, to make it what it was,
and others were now about to take it in hand, without the advantage of
his past experience, and with the drawback of inheriting whatever odium
attached to him.

The evening before they were to reac