ffing out a long spiral wreath of smoke as he
spoke, and reaching out his hand towards the tumbler of weak brandy
pawnee standing on a small table by his side.

"Hear him, the impostor!" laughed a second. "Two years of leave, after
nearly nine of foreign service, and he talks of regret."

The first speaker was rather a slight figure, but withal strongly built;
thin and wiry, he showed no superfluous flesh. The rather prominent
forehead was tanned to a deep brown, save where the line of the
forage-cap showed the white skin of the European; the cheeks were
sunken, and bore the sallow tinge of sickness, while the aquiline nose,
the well-cut mouth, and the rather heavy under jaw, spoke of
determination and vigour of character. Nearly six feet in height, he
lay languidly back in his chair, the dark masses of hair curling under
the forage-cap, and the large black eyes giving a still more marked
appearance of illness to his features.

"If I could shake off this feeling of illness, Harris," he replied, "get
rid of this terrible Bellary fever, you may depend upon it. I would
throw up my leave. One's regiment becomes one's family after nearly
twelve years' service, nine of which have been passed in India."

"And you are only captain," replied the other. "A pretty look-out for
me, an ensign yet. You had better stop and give me a lift, by making a
death vacancy. Do, Hughes, there's a good fellow."

Captain Hughes laughed.

"We shall have the route to-morrow; and if the march to Secunderabad be
anything like what ours was from Madras, you won't want for death
vacancies."

"Was it such a terrible one?" asked the other, in a serious tone.

"Terrible," replied Major Ashley, who had just left the table, and was
lighting his third cigar since dinner, "why, a march up-country in India
is always terrible work, as you'll find out before you are many weeks
older. There was some dispute about our destination when we were
ordered up here three years since," continued the Major, "and so we were
detained until the hot weather set in, and cholera caught us up. The
road we took may even yet be traced by the mounds of stones which cover
our dead."

"It was a fearful time," said Captain Hughes. "When we arrived in sight
of the walls of yonder fort, the men were dropping fast, the sentries
over the hospital had often to be changed from outside to inside the
tent, the surgeon and assistant-surgeon had to be carried to see their
s