turns into cloud because she loves and is loved. At the same time, I saw Saumarez's face as he heard Maud Copleigh's voice, and fifty yards away from the clump of orange trees I saw a brown holland habit getting upon a horse.

It must have been my state of over-excitement that made me so quick to meddle with what did not concern me. Saumarez was moving off to the habit; but I pushed him back and said: "Stop here and explain. I'll fetch her back!" And I ran out to get at my own horse. I had a perfectly unnecessary notion that everything must be done decently and in order, and that Saumarez' first care was to wipe the happy look out of Maud Copleigh's face. All the time I was linking up the curb-chain I wondered how he would do it.

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I cantered after Edith Copleigh, thinking to bring her back slowly on some pretense or another. But she galloped away as soon as she saw me, and I was forced to ride after her in earnest. She called back over her shoulder, Go away! I'm going home. Oh, go away!" " two or three times; but my business was to catch her first, and argue later. The ride just fitted in with the rest of the evil dream. The ground was very bad, and now and again we rushed through the whirling, choking "dust-devils" in the skirts of the flying storm. There was a burning hot wind blowing that brought up a stench of stale brick-kilns with it; and through the half light and through the dustdevils, across that desolate plain, flickered the brown holland habit on the gray horse. She headed for the Station at first.

Then she wheeled round and set off for the river through beds of burned-down jungle-grass, bad even to ride pig over. In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the light

ning crackling over head, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove us down wind like pieces of paper.

I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs and the roar of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon through the yellow mist seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was literally drenched with sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the gray stumbled, recovered himself, and pulled up dead lame. My brute was used up altogether. Edith Copleigh was in a sad state, plastered with dust, her helmet off, and crying bitterly. "Why can't you let me alone?" she said. "I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh, please let me go!"

"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has something to say to you."

It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh, and, though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I could not tell her in as many words what Saumarez had told me. I thought he could do that better himself. All her pretense about being tired and wanting to go home broke down, and she rocked herself to and fro in the saddle as she sobbed, and the hot wind blew her black hair to leeward. I am not going to repeat what she said, because she was utterly unstrung.

This, if you please, was the cynical Miss Copleigh. Here was I, almost an utter stranger to her, trying to tell her that Saumarez loved her, and she was to come back to hear him say so. I believe I made myself understood, for she gathered the gray together and made him hobble somehow, and we set off for the tomb, while the storm went thundering down to Umballa and a few big drops of warm rain fell. I found out that she had been standing close

to Saumarez when he proposed to her sister, and had wanted to go home to cry in peace, as an English girl should. She dabbed her eyes with her pocket handkerchief as we went along, and babbled to me out of sheer lightness of heart and hysteria. That was perfectly unnatural; and yet, it seemed all right at the time and in the place. All the world was only the two Copleigh girls, Saumarez and I, ringed in with the lightning and the dark; and the guidance of this misguided world seemed to lie in my hands.

When we returned to the tomb in the deep, dead stillness that followed the storm, the dawn was just breaking and nobody had gone away. They were waiting for our return. Saumarez most of all. His face was white and drawn. As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came forward to meet us, and, when he helped her down from her saddle, he kissed her before all the picnic. It was like a scene in a theater, and the likeness was heightened by all. the dust-white, ghostly-looking men and women under the orange trees clapping their hands—as if they were watching a play-at Saumarez' choice. I never knew anything so un-English in my life.

Lastly, Saumarez said we must all go home, or the Station would come out to look for us, and would I be good enough to ride home with Maud Copleigh? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, I said.

So we formed up, six couples in all, and went back two by two, Saumarez walking at the side of Edith Copleigh, who was riding his horse.

The air was cleared; and little by little, as the sun rose, I felt we were all dropping back again into ordinary men and women, and that the "Great Pop Picnic was a thing altogether apart and out of the world-never to happen again. It had gone with the dust-storm and the tingle in the hot air.

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I felt tired and limp, and a good deal ashamed of myself as I went in for a bath and some sleep.

There is a woman's version of this story, but it will never be written

leigh cares to try.

unless Maud Cop

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

"An' when the war began, we chased the bold Afghan,

An' we made the bloomin' Ghazi for to flee, boys O! An' we marched into Kabul, and we tuk the Balar 'Issar

An' we taught 'em to respec' the British Soldier." -Barrack Room Ballad.

ULVANEY. Ortheris and Learoyd are priv

Mesin P. Company of a Line Regiment, and

personal friends of mine. Collectively I think, but am not certain, they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes.

They told me this story the other day, in the Umballa refreshment room while we were waiting for an up-train.

Of course, you know Lord Benira Trig. He is a duke, or an earl, or something unofficial; also a peer; also a globe-trotter. On all three accounts, as Ortheris says, "'e didn't deserve no consideration." He was out here for three months collecting materials for a book on Our Eastern Impedimenta," and quartering himself upon everybody, like a Cossack, in evening dress.

His particular vice-because he was a Radical, I suppose was having garrisons turned out for his inspection. He would then dine with the officer commanding, and insult him, across the mess table, about the appearance of the troops. That was Benira's way.

He turned out troops once too often. He came to Helanthami Cantonment on a Tuesday. He wished to go shopping in the bazaars on Wednesday, and he "desired" the troops to be turned out on a Thursday. On-a-Thursday! The officer commanding could not well refuse; for Benira was a lord. There was an indignation meeting of subalterns in the mess room, to call the colonel pet

names.

But the rale dimonstrashin," said Mulvaney, was in B Comp'ny barrick; we three headin' it." Mulvaney climbed on to the refreshment bar, settled himself comfortably, and went on: "Whin the row was at ut's foinest an' B Comp'ny was fur goin' out to murther this man Thrigg on the p'rade groun' Learoyd here takes up his helmet an' sezfwhat was ut ye said?"

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Ah said," said Learoyd, gie us t' brass. Tak' oop a subscripshun, lads, for to put off t'p'rade, an' if t' p'rade's not put off, ah'll gie t' brass back agean. Thot's wot ah said. All B Coomp'ny knawed me. Ah took oop a big subscripshunfower rupees eight annas 'twas-an' ah went oot to turn t' job over. Mulvaney an' Orth'ris coom with me."

Here Ortheris interrupted. "Ave you read the papers? said he.

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Sometimes," I said.

"We 'ad read the papers, an' we put hup a faked decoity, a-a sedukshun."

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Abdukshin, ye cockney," said Mulvaney.

"Abdukshun or sedukshun-no great odds. Anyow, we arrange to taik an' put Mister Benhira out o' the way till Thursday was hover, or 'e too busy to rux 'isself about p'raids. Hi was the man wot said: 'We'll make a few rupees off o' the business."

"We hild a council av war," continued Mulvaney, "walkin' roun' by the Artill'ry Lines. I was prisi