would let Saadut volunteer information if he liked, but that he would not ask for it.

"It is odd," he thought, "that after all these years he should feel so much the shame of siding with the enemy. He began with Sikhs, they were Hindus and enemies; these men around us are co-religionists; though a descendant of the Afghan followers of those old Afghan kings, cannot have much in common with these border tribes, who may as likely be Israelites as anything else."

However there was not much time for thinking. Arthur soon gathered his papers together, and went to dress for the later breakfast which appeared at ten o'clock. Ida was there of course, looking rather weary. There was little said, and directly after the meal Arthur drove off to kutcherry to work there all day, and Ida, after ordering dinner, took some worsted work into the drawingroom to begin her long day alone. The

worsted work was very oddly unlike her old self, but Arthur liked it, and noticed it; and so she did it industriously, with a floating impression that it had something to do with duty. To Ida duty was becoming a fetish which she unceasingly worshipped. It would seem that she had not judgment enough left to know that it would be better done with less thought and effort.

CHAPTER X.

A "COFFEE SHOP"

A FEW days passed quietly after the conversation we have related in the last chapter. Some rain fell, making the fresh green things look greener, and promising plenty of miasma later on in the season; but for the time it was healthy enough and very beautiful. The official world was much excited, and alive with orders and counter-orders; no one knew quite what was wanted, yet it was a consolation to be doing something. Outside the principal offices no one knew what was coming, or even what was threatening, and conjecture was rife. Young soldiers looked longingly up the Khyber Pass, hoping above all things for a march that way. Unprincipled as it was, not a man among these young soldiers, and few of the older ones, but longed

above all things for a war of aggression, and pictured, in his dreams of unmixed happiness, a march through the Khyber, and a tussle with the hardy warriors of the land that is so decidedly the promised land to all our border soldiers. In absolute default of any known quarrel with the old Dost, then reigning in Afghanistan, the more imaginative spirits talked of Bokhara, Badakshan, and Samarkand, evincing perfectly awful geographical ignorance, coupled with much military ardour.

A few of the more desponding threw cold water on these dreams of bliss, and pooh-poohed the whole affair.

It was discussed at all the "coffee-shops" of the various regimental messes with great eagerness. The term coffee-shop had best be explained here :-there is no shop in the case, and there is not necessarily coffee, but it means the early morning breakfast, which is always in India a social meal, and for which "chota hazri," or "coffee shop," are the most

common names.

At the "coffee-shop" of the 5th Punjāb Native Infantry, Major MacPherson, the commanding officer of that corps, was expressing his opinions very strongly between the puffs of his cheroot," My dear fellows, don't be sanguine. Take my word for it, it will be nothing but a frontier row, than which I I don't know a greater nuisance. We shall be put under canvas at the nastiest time of the whole year, stuck there for two or three months with nothing to do, constantly under orders for places we are never meant to go to, worried with dispatches and telegrams from morning to night, and probably taught a brand new drill, from the Horse Guards there and then; and when we have two-thirds of the force down with fever, and cholera popping in and out among us, we shall be marched back to cantonments, and the civilians will settle the affair."

"That's overdrawn, Major," said a smart young irregular-cavalry man. "A frontier row is better sport than that, and they say