But he cannot _manage_ to feel that he is of
the same value as a European, or to look upon his corpse with a similar
awe.

In the early days of the Australian colonies, an officer in a Scottish
regiment quartered out in that hemisphere caught a native robbing his
garden, chased him with a club, and hit him harder than he intended, so
that the man fell down and never got up again, for which the officer was
sorry, though held justified. About that time bad news from home
oppressed his spirits to such an extent that his soldier-servant, who
was much attached to him, and was allowed considerable freedom of speech
in consequence of his value and fidelity, thought fit to remonstrate.
He attributed his master's lowness of spirits entirely to his brooding
over the accident, and said one morning when he had brushed the clothes
and brought the shaving-water--

"I ask your pardon, meejor; but it's sair to see you take on so aboot
the likes of that heathen body. A great traveller I was conversing with
last night, and a respectable and trustworthy man, sir, told me that
there's thousands and thousands of them up the country."

He thought that his master was fretting over the wanton destruction of a
rare specimen, a sort of dodo!

Howard and Forsyth left Khartoum and strolled towards the plain where
the Egyptian army lay. A town of tents, well pitched indeed, and
dressed in parallel lines, and kept fairly clean--the English officers,
though they had had all their work cut out, had at length taught the
Egyptians that--but wanting in all those little embellishments which
distinguish an English or French encampment, especially if it is at all
permanent. No little flags to mark the companies; no extemporised
miniature gardens; no neat frames to hang recently-cleaned accoutrements
on. The sentries mooned up and down, carrying their rifles as if they
were troublesome, heavy things, they longed to threw down, that they
might put their hands in their pockets.

In one block of tents, however, which they passed through there was a
great difference.

The sentry stood to his front and shouldered arms, as he saw Howard
approach, smartly and with alacrity. The men were cleaning their arms
as if they took pride in the task, not like paupers picking oakum;
others were laughing loudly, or playing like schoolboys, and Harry
noticed they were all black.

"These niggers look much finer fellows than the rest," he observed.

"I should th