Presently, the first intensity of her sobbing past, and though her face was still hidden against his neck, her hands began to wander over him, pressing him fondly here and there. In doing so she touched the little naked body of the picaninny. She raised herself up with a strange, wild cry.

He tried to hold it from her, to explain; but she would hear nothing, and followed him, holding out both hands and staring hungrily at the child.

"A child-give it me, quick! Give it me, Jasper!"

"Barbara," he said, blunderingly—“it's black-and motherless. We mustn't hurt-" "Hurt? Motherless? Oh you-. Give me the child!" She stamped her foot. There was something imperious in the demand; he handed her the sleeping creature. She clutched it fiercely, and seemed to crush it to her breast; yet it was taken and held with such unerring gentleness, that the picaninny merely opened two large sleepy eyes and closed them again. Then he snuggled against her neck and went to sleep again.

Barbara laughed and sobbed at once for joy. She rubbed her cheek on the picaninny's shoulder; she took one of the fat little arms and pressed it round her neck; she nibbled at the child here and there with her lips. And all the The Cornhill Magazine.

time she swung herself from foot to foot with a cradling, motherly movement.

Brown, who had withdrawn, came back; the two men stood together in amazement. She looked up at them presently, and laughed a deep-chested happy laugh, and fled, hugging the picaninny to her.

The two men stood alone for a while, saying nothing. By and bye they stole guiltily, within; Townshend lit the lamp and they foraged, still exchanging scarcely a word, for something to eat.

An hour later Townshend crept quietly back from his wife's room.

"They're asleep," he whispered, "dead asleep, cuddled up together, black and white. It's been a strange day, Crackey. Let's go out and smoke."

They went forth. The illimitable downs were white beneath the moon. The two men lay in the grass and watched the smoke-clouds poise and vanish in the dewless, windless night. But they found little to say to one another.

That was the first and last "dispersal" of the blacks on Townshend's cattle-run. The picaninny lived to be a stockrider there; and within a year of the picaninny's coming a child was born at the Oontoona homestead.

Herbert C. Macilwaine.

Frederick Langbridge.

I.

A straggling building with a spiked gateway, sadly out of repair, and needing manipulation in the opening, as it led through a bare courtyard to a portico that did its best to be imposing, such was your introduction to the royalty of Balsnigh Rai, of an Indian principality. And if indeed the iron and mortar had failed to impress you, there was always the chance that the illdressed, ill-drilled guard would excite what was lacking in the sentiment.

But there was time for a regular series of impressions to lounge through your unoccupied mind. The opium-eating courtiers around his magnificent Highness believed in admitting you to the presence in detachments, as it were. The more abject you felt, the more likely was it that you would appreciate their pinchbeck glories; and you sat on in the durbar vehicle, the two lean horses foaming with the drive from the guest-house, under the weight of a not too modern chariot and a harness patched up with strips of soiled rag or old packing-cord. Along the unwashed stone verandahs were disposed dirzies (tailors), of varying capacity. Their chief sat holding some cheap Manchester print between the toes of his right foot, the while he clicked the unerring steel of the workman whose craft had come to him, like his existence, from his immediate antecedents. Curious garments they were which he cut, loose, shapeless coats with tight interminable sleeves; and he threw them now to this, now to that

* Purdah, a veil or curtain, and especially a curtain screening women from the sight of men; the phrase is equivalent to Zenana, the women's apartments as distinct from the men's. "Native ladies look upon the confine

subordinate, who whipped a long piece of cotton off a small white ball, and requisitioned both toes and fingers while he helped the creation of the coats through the next stage, preparatory to the operations of the large important man at the sewing-machine. Yes, a veritable sewing-machine it was, and the colony and the State were rightly proud of it.

Before you look further, you should note the way the men work. "Tis nonWestern, topsy-turvy, the needle pulled away from you, and travelling therefore, from left to right of the seam, instead of vice versâ. In a group by themselves sit the gold and silver embroidcrers, lean men with keen faces and bent backs. They sit on the floor crosslegged, and the most beautiful designs grow under circumstances and with the aid of implements primitive to a degree. Beside each worker lies the bullion (gold and silver in tiny spangles or delicate wire lengths) in some rough receptacle, an old newspaper, perhaps, or the contents of your wastepaper basket. The design is chalked out on the velvet or satin; and he sews the bullion on to this, running the sharpest of needles through the wire, which he has first snipped to the size required. The manipulation of that mass of glittering gold and silver becomes fascinating,-but here is Chunital the herald. Miss Rebecca Yeastman, the lady-doctor, through whose spectacles we have been looking, is summoned to the durbar-room.

Tall is Miss Rebecca, and spare, and angular. As she alights, her chatelaine

ment behind the purdah as a badge of rank, and also as a sign of chastity, and are exceedingly proud of it." LIFE IN THE MOFUSSIL, by an Ex-Civilian. Two volumes, 1878.

jingles ominously. Have you ever noticed how much personality there is in a jingle? There is the cheerful jingle of the maiden of seventeen, an inviting tintinnabulation, saying,-"I am coming, play with me, laugh with me, waste as many precious minutes as you dare!" There is the decided resonant clash of the elderly matron: "I have come," it says, "to set things straight;"-don't you hear the sound? Then lastly there is the mean between the two; the confident, active jingle of the woman of business, not enticing, but yet not jarring, just pleasantly negative. "I know not what your work may be, but I've come to do mine, and to do it well;" and at the sound all idlers despise themselves, and slink into unseen corners. In India there is a further jingle, the jingle of the domestic, "rings on her fingers, bells on her toes;" but her ditty is,-"This is my bank! my bank! In this showy, noisy form I carry my savings."

Rebecca Yeastman was of the third category, and the tailors instinctively sat the more upright as she passed them, and sleepy Huri, in the corner, rubbed his eyes, and cracked his toes, and fell vigorously to his tacking.

Not a whit bashful was she, as she followed her guide up the marble staircase; the outlook was improving, but her environment very seldom affects a woman of Rebecca's calibre. For so self-possessed, brisk a person her walk was a surprise: 'twas rather like a camel's,-head protruding, steps long and halting-but it did still suggest dogged steadfastness of purpose; and she was a thoroughly good creature, every faculty of her, of that you might be certain.

"Lady Sahib will wait here," said the man. "Ranee Sahib have not yet had permission to receive. Rajah Sahib has the white mark on his forehead, will not finish the service of the holy Vishnu

An hour or more! the practical soul of the woman of business abhorred the long vacuity; however, she had resources within possible reach. From a capacious pocket she produced some feminine filigree occupation, and ran the ivory bobbin in and out under the vigilant pince-nez.

Presently it occurred to her that it might be as well to put together her impressions of the room. A comprehensive glance sufficed. "Plush and broken crockery!" she said, with her characteristic grunt, and as her eyes wandered back to the bobbin, she intercepted the steady scrutiny of a pair of black eyes. They were not, by any means, a nice pair of eyes, long, narrow, a little quizzical, wholly wily and untrustworthy,-hall-marked spy. Rebecca Yeastman was certainly not sensitive, or she would have realized earlier that behind almost every curtain lurked some such watcher, soft-footed, noiseless, wakeful. However, this particular inspection in no way disconcerted her; neither annoyance nor curtosity, even the most fleeting, varied the immobility of her face; and, albeit she knew it not, it was to this fact that she owed the termination of her vigil. The old harridan, who directed affairs behind the purdah, carried back a favorable verdict. "She'll do," she said. "She's as ugly as the toad which croaks in the pond yonder; and she can keep a secret, or may the Gods forever still my lying tongue!"

It was this old woman, Parbathi herself, who went back for her; and she led her through such dark, intentionally devious passages, that Rebecca, though excellent at locality, could never tell whether or not the room she finally entered were in the same building as the one she had left.

The sight which greeted her was sufficiently new and engrossing. The room

was large and square with windows tco high for purposes of outlook, and closely barred against all use as ventilators. On the floor was a gaudy Western carpet, stamped, literally as well as intrinsically, as cheap German merchandise. In the centre of the room stood a high silver bedstead, hung with opaque curtains, which were evidently not intended as security against mosquitoes, for those musical creatures buzzed among the heavy folds with appreciative contentment. On the floor sat women of varying ages, some shaven, and without ornament, others caparisoned gaily enough; all in the rich dark reds and blues of the Kathiawad saree. They were moving their bodies to and fro to a monotonous Gregorian wail, which ceased not for the entrance of the intruder. Parbathi pointed to the bed, and Rebecca approached, being constrained to submit for lack of language, else her initiatory activities would certainly have been devoted to the extrusion of the noise and the introduction of some fresh air.

When her eyes had adapted themselves to the want of light, what she saw in no way alarmed her medical instincts. Among tumbled bed-clothes, rich silks, and cheap cotton sheets. lay, fully dressed and bejewelled, a smug, sleek, decently-featured Indian lady. Her skin was beautifully smooth, and under her lashes were the accustomed artificial shadows, the material absit omen of the nation. One plump hand lay lazily across the clothes, and you saw that the nails were well-kept and dyed with the brilliant mendhi; the other hand was coiled pettishly round the short thick neck.

“Bilious," said Rebecca. Parbathi did not understand, but she saw that the doctor was not impressed by the heinousness of the disease, and she poured out volleys of jargon, waving her hands in wild gesticulation. Then,

growing helpless at the sight of Rebecca's calm and sane proceedings,—the matter of fact feeling of the pulse, the unceremonious lift of the eye-lid, the business-like production of tablet and pencil for the composition of a suitable tonic-it dawned on her that a communicating tongue was what she wanted; and she darted out to secure old Prubhu Das, the domestic secretary, and the one male, save the Rajah, who was allowed access to this end of the palace. Prubhu Das was just behind the door, watching, and was therefore soon produced. He was a spare, fleshless Hindu, clad in flowing robes over which he wore a long white coat. On his head was a slight black cap, from out of which had escaped the wiry grey top-knot, the sign occipital of his Brahminism; and as he bowed and genuflected to the lady, this odd little termination bobbed in the most ludicrous way against the rest of his clean-shaven head. For you must know that Brahmins grow a capillary oasis there alone, where most Westerners are innutritive in old age.

"Your honor," he said, "your Monstrosity, your Magniloquence, learned in the English Esculapianisms! in this poor house we, prince of the people, are your dusty slaves!" Here he paused, to leer deprecatingly and express facially his grovelling obsequiousness.

"Humph!" said Rebecca "you know English I suppose? Well then, this lady has nothing the matter with her which cannot be cured by bestirring herself. She is bilious,-that is allthe rest is imagination. Here is a tonic, and I have also noted directions as to diet, air, and exercise. 'These windows ought to be open, and all these howling women turned out. Do you hear?"

Prùbhu Das was the most delightful pantomime possible. There he stood, slightly inclining forward, his hands clasped in agonized supplication, his

eyes blinking twenty to the second, and at every few words spoken he jerked his head towards the doctor, opening his mouth in a gape which was meant to convey a combination of assent and astonishment. Then he spoke; the occasion was serious, and his speech matched it.

"Lady not diagnosticate good, right way. Ranee Sahib not bile; Ranee Sahib poison. You see old Mother Thekrani wear widow's cloth. She cobra-minded, breeze in her brain. She make poison ready. Cook sweetmeats, in sweetmeats hide poison. Ranee eat sweetmeat, now sick, tomorrow die. Rajah Sahib carry her on litter, make her ashes. Mother Thekrani too much wicked. Doctor Lady give certificate, write Ranee Sahib die poison." He gasped, exhausted with such direct speaking, for his mind was tortuous and abhorred a straight line.

"The

"Nonsense!" was the retort. lady is no more poisoned than I am when I eat too much dinner." But Prubhu Das's next move was more practical. The doctor was presented with a quantity of food alleged to have been eaten by the Ranee, neatly bottled and sealed in accordance with local police-instructions on the subject-what an amount of study those rules had cost the old man!-and, albeit denying any connection between the food and the royal lady, Rebecca promised to investigate and report the next day. She chuckled gleefully as she carried off her prize; poisons were her special subject, and she had hardly dared to hope that an introduction to the Indian type would be so soon afforded her. The report she wrote before she slept, in the large chandelier-lighted drawingroom of the guest-house. It was brief enough; the food contained poison sufficient to have extinguished instantly the entire nine lives of the most vital cat. She added an unsolicited rider on the impossibility of the Ranee's having par

taken of this concoction, and of the equal absurdity of connecting the Thekrani with any such deep-laid scheme. But the perspicuity of her arguments appealed not to the Durbar. There was poison in the food, so much was certain; therefore the old Thekrani (who had not even the most remote connection with the royal kitchen) must be treated as a criminal at the domestic tribunal.

II.

Not far from Gower Street station, in a comparatively quiet corner of the city of London, stands a great block of modern red brick. You are back again in the haunts of civilization now, and you press the button to summon the accustomed porter. He comes promptly, and you follow him up a flight of steps, which beam upon you in the unmistakable cleanliness of English soap and water. "Miss Marion Mainwaring? This way, No. 17," says the stout custodian of the Women Students' Chambers, Chenies Street; and he retires with a salute, leaving you to your own

resources.

It looks like a student's room, and a woman's. Prints of Rubens and Nicolo Poussin, of Cuyp and William Hunt, of Burne-Jones and Rossetti Madonnas and bachannal orgies, Dutch sunsets and beggar-boys, hang, in impartial selection and appropriate setting, against the Morris-papered walls. One end of the room is lined with deepbrowed tomes, of a scientific and medical aspect; a writing-table in the spacious bow-window betrays an air of recent requisition; softly-cushioned lounges invite to unstudious repose; within easy reach are picture-papers and the latest poem. The mantel-piece is laden with the pretty yellow jonquil; and a copper kettle is just beginning to simmer on the pleasantly crackling fire, beside which sits the tall, dark, strong