his machine-gun for my private consumption.

He was taking this machine-gun up to the front, and mighty proud he was of it. "A clever gun," he called it; "an almighty clever gun."

He had ridden alongside of it sitting on the top of his horse as sailors do through seventy miles of desert without a halt; watching over it and tending it as he might have watched and tended his mother, or perhaps some other woman.

"Gad! doctor," he exclaimed, kicking out his sturdy legs and contemplating with some satisfaction the yellow hide topboots which he had bought at the Army and Navy stores. I know the boots well, and avoid them. Gad! doctor, you should see that gun on the war-path. Travels as light as a tricycle. And when she begins to talk my stars! Click click-click-click. For all the world like a steam-launch's engine - mowing 'em down all the time. No work for you there. It will be no use you and your stalactites progging about with skewers for the bullet. Look at the other side, my boy, and you'll find the beauty has just walked through them."

"Soda or plain ?" I asked-in parenthesis.

"Soda. I don't like the flavor of dead camel. A big drink, please. I feel as if I were lined with sandpaper."

He slept that night in the little shanty built of mud, and roofed chiefly with old palm-mats, which was gracefully called the head surgeon's quarters. That is to say, he partook of such hospitality as I had to offer him.

Sammy and I had met before he had touched a rope or I a scalpel. We hailed from the same part of the country - down Devonshire way; and to a limited extent, we knew each other's people; which little phrase has a vast meaning in places where men do congregate.

We turned in pretty early I on a hos pital mattress, he in my bed; but Sam would not go to sleep. He would lie with his arms above his head (which is not an attitude of sleep), and talk about that everlasting gun.

I dozed off to the murmur of his voice expatiating on the extreme cunning of the ejector, and awoke to hear details of the rifling.

We did not talk of home, as do men in books when lying by a camp-fire. Perhaps it was owing to the absence of that picturesque adjunct to a soldier's life. We talked chiefly of the clever gun; and once,

just before he fell asleep, Sammy returned to the question of the nurses.

"Yes," he said, "the head saw-bones down there told me to tell you that he had got permission to send you three nurses. Treat 'em kindly, Jack, for my sake. Bless their hearts! They mean well."

Then he fell asleep, and left me thinking of his words, and of the spirit which had prompted them.

I knew really nothing of this man's life, but he seemed singularly happy, with that happiness which only comes when daily existence has a background to it. He spoke habitually of women, as if he loved them all for the sake of one; and this not being precisely my own position, I was glad when he fell asleep.

The fort was astir next morning at four. The bugler kindly blew a blast into our glassless window which left no doubt about it.

"That means all hands on deck, I take it," said Sam, who was one of the few men capable of good humor before tiffin time.

By six o'clock he was ready to go. It was easy to see what sort of officer this cheery sailor was by the way his men worked.

While they were getting the machinegun limbered up, Sam came back to my quarters, and took a hasty breakfast.

"Feel a bit down this morning," he said, with a gay smile. "Cheap - very cheap. I hope I am not going to funk it. It is all very well for some of you longfaced fellows, who don't seem to have much to live for, to fight for the love of fighting. I don't want to fight any man ; I am too fond of 'em all for that."

I went out after breakfast, and I gave him a leg up on to his very sorry horse, which he sat like a tailor or a sailor. He held the reins like tiller-lines, and indulged in a pleased smile at the effect of the yellow boots.

"No great hand at this sort of thing," he said, with a nod of farewell. "When the beast does anything out of the common, or begins to make heavy weather of it, I am not."

He ranged up alongside his beloved. gun, and gave the word of command with more dignity than he knew what to do with.

All that day I was employed in arranging quarters for the nurses. To do this I was forced to turn some of our most precious stores out into the open, covering them with a tarpaulin, and in consequence felt all the more assured that my chief was making a great mistake.

I sent my enthusiastic assistant to the nurses' quarters with a message that they were not to report themselves to me until they had had a night's rest, and turned in. At midnight I was awakened by the orderly, and summoned to the tent of the officer in command. This youth's face was considerably whiter than his linen. He was consulting with his second-incommand, a boy of twenty-two or thereabouts.

A man covered with sand and blood was sitting in a hammock-chair, rubbing his eyes and drinking something out of a tumbler.

"News from the front?" I inquired without ceremony, which hindrance we had long since dispensed with.

"Yes, and bad news."

It certainly was not pleasant hearing. Some one mentioned the word disaster, and we looked at each other with hard, anxious eyes. I thought of the women, and almost decided to send them back before daylight.

In a few moments a fresh man was roused out of his bed, and sent full gallop through the moonlight across the desert to headquarters, and the officer in command began to regain confidence. I think he extracted it from the despatch-bearer's tumbler. After all, he was not responsible for much. He was merely a connectinglink, a point of touch between two greater

men.

It was necessary to get my men to work at once, but I gave particular orders to leave the nurses undisturbed. Disaster at the front meant hard work at the rear. We all knew that, and endeavored to make ready for a sudden rush of wounded. The rush began before daylight. As they came in we saw to them, dressing their wounds and packing them as closely as possible. But the stream was contin

At six o'clock I gave orders to awaken the nurses and order them to prepare their quarters for the reception of the wounded. At half past six an Army Hospital Corps man came to me in the ward : "Shockin' case, sir, just come in," he said. "Officer. Gun busted, sir." "Take him to my quarters,' " I said, wiping my instruments on my sleeve. In a few minutes I followed, and on entering my little room the first thing I saw was a pair of yellow boots.

There was no doubt about the boots and the white duck trousers, and although I could not see the face, I knew that this was Sammy Fitz-Warrener come back again.

A woman one of the nurses for whom he had pleaded was bending over the bed with a sponge and a basin of tepid water. As I entered she turned upon me a pair of calmly horror-stricken eyes.

"Oh!" she whispered meaningly, stepping back to let me approach. I had no time to notice then that she was one of those largely built women, with perfect skin and fair hair, who make one think of what England must have been before Gallic blood got to be so widely disseminated in the race.

"Please pull down that mat from the window," I said, indicating a temporary blind which I had put up.

She did so promptly, and returned to the bedside, falling into position as it were, awaiting my orders.

I bent over the bed, and I must confess that what I saw there gave me a thrill of horror which will come again at times so long as I live.

I made a sign to Sister to continue her task of sponging away the mud, of which one ingredient was sand.

"Both eyes," she whispered, "are destroyed."

Not the top of the skull," I said, “you must not touch that."

For we both knew that our task was without hope.

As I have said, I knew something of Fitz-Warrener's people, and I could not help lingering there, where I could do no good, when I knew that I was wanted elsewhere.

Suddenly his lips moved, and Sister, kneeling down on the floor, bent over him.

I could not hear what he said, but I think she did. I saw her lips frame the whisper "Yes" in reply, and over her

face there swept suddenly a look of great tenderness.

After a little pause she rose and came to me.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"Fitz-Warrener of the Naval Brigade. Do you know him?"

"No, I never heard of him. Of course it is quite hopeless?" "Quite.'

She returned to her position by the bedside, with one arm laid across his chest.

Presently he began whispering again, and at intervals she answered him. It suddenly occurred to me that, in his unconsciousness, he was mistaking her for some one else, and that she, for some woman's reason, was deceiving him purposely.

I

In a few moments I was sure of this. I tried not to look; but I saw it all. saw his poor blind hands wander over her throat and face, up to her hair.

"What is this?" he muttered quite distinctly, with that tone of self-absorption which characterizes the sayings of an unconscious man. "What is this silly cap? "

His fingers wandered on over the snowy linen until they came to the strings. As an aspirant to the title of gentleman, I felt like running away - many doctors know this feeling; as a doctor, I could only stay.

His fingers fumbled with the strings. Still Sister bent over the bed. Perhaps she bent an inch or two nearer. One hand was beneath his neck, supporting the poor, shattered head.

He slowly drew off the cap, and his fingers crept lovingly over the soft, fair hair.

66

Marny," he said, quite clearly, "you've done your hair up, and you're nothing but a little girl, you know-nothing but a little girl."

I could not help watching his fingers, and yet I felt like a man committing sacrilege.

"When I left you," said the brainless voice, "you wore it down your back. You were a little girl-you are a little girl now."

And he slowly drew a hairpin out. One long lock fell curling to her shoulder. She never looked up, never noticed me, but knelt there like a ministering angel personating for a time a girl whom we had never seen.

"My little girl," he added, with a low laugh, and drew out another hairpin.

In a few moments all her hair was about her shoulders. I had never thought that she might be carrying such glory quietly hidden beneath the simple nurse's cap.

"That is better," he said, "that is better."

And he let all the hairpins fall on the coverlet.

"Now, you are my own Marny," he murmured. "Are you not?"

She hesitated one moment. "Yes, dear!" she said softly. "I am your own Marny."

With her disengaged hand she stroked his blanching cheek. There was a certain science about her touch, as if she had once known something of these matters.

Lovingly and slowly the smoke-grimed fingers passed over the wonderful hair, smoothing it.

Then he grew more daring. He touched her eyes, her gentle cheeks, the quiet, strong lips. He slipped to her shoul der, and over the soft folds of her black dress.

"Been gardening?" he asked, coming to the bib of her nursing apron.

It was marvellous how the brain, which was laid open to the day, retained the consciousness of one subject so long.

"Yes - dear," she whispered. "Your old apron is all wet!" he said reproachfully, touching her breast where the blood-his own blood was slowly drying.

--

His hand passed on, and as it touched her, I saw her eyes soften into such a wonderful tenderness, that I felt as if I were looking on a part of Sister's life which was sacred.

I saw a little movement as if to draw back-then she resolutely held her position. But her eyes were dull with a new pain. I wonder - I have wondered ever since what memories that poor senseless wreck of a man was arousing in the woman's heart by his wandering touch.

I must say that I felt like crying a feeling which had not come to me for twenty years. I busied myself purposely with the dead man, and when I had finished my task I turned and found Sister filling in the papers - her cap neatly tied ― her golden hair hidden. I signed the certificate, placing my name beneath hers.

For a moment we stood. Our eyes met, and we said nothing. She moved towards the door, and I held it open while she passed out.

Two hours later I received orders from the officer in command to send the nurses

back to headquarters. Our men were falling back before the enemy.

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN.

From The Nineteenth Century. AN INDIAN FUNERAL SACRIFICE.

"WISHING the good of your country, serve the Kine, otherwise you waste all your wealth. The Cow should be protected. See how the strength of the Christian religion is increased by means of preachers and the distribution of catechisms! I, too, will publish a periodical called the Propagator of the Cow Reli gion. Those subscribers who remit their subscriptions in advance will receive gratis a picture of the Mother Cow, with colored borders. This is a work for the benefit of the country, written by the servant of the Cow, preacher for the preservation of the Kine, and one desirous of kindness."

This curious amalgam of old-world religion and of latter-day journalism was freely distributed at Indian railway stations within the last few months, and is a strange contrast to the resolutions of the recent Indian National Congress, based upon an assumed demand by the people of India for representative government of the Western type.

It is only another proof of the diverse influences at work and of the widely different customs prevalent in British India, that, while "the servant of the Cow, and one desirous of kindness" is circulating his advertisements, the survivors of a small and diminishing "tribe of rather fair people on the mountains in the kingdom of the Zamorin," who were described in 1672 as adorers of their kine, consider themselves aggrieved because the author

The Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, who directed the spiritual concerns of the subjects of his most faithful Majesty the king of Portugal upon the storied western coast of India, was told in 1600 that a race of Christians called Todas lived fifty leagues away from his remotest church, and he sent a Jesuit father to tend these wandering sheep, which father, however, reported that he found no Christianity in them; and seventy years later the procurator-general of the barefooted Carmelites said: "These Todas pray to the buffaloes by which they live, and hang a miserable little bell upon their necks, which is enough to ensure them adoration. Though the buffaloes are very often killed by tigers, yet the Todas do not slacken in their worship."

Of this curious race, by some held to be aborigines of southern India, by some to be Manichæans, and by others to be one of the lost tribes of Israel, but six or seven hundred remain, scattered in tiny villages of oven-shaped wicker houses over the breezy downs of the Nilgiri hills. Whatever be their origin and probably they are aboriginal inhabitants of the land they live in-they worship nature in its loveliest moods, and ever build on sloping lawns of emerald turf, by rippling rills of limpid water, and alongside little woods of ilex, eugenia, and rhododendron, nestling in the folds of hills, whence a glorious prospect stretches of hot and shimmering plain below, dotted with giant ant-hills, as they seem to the eye, with silver patches of irrigation lakes sparkling in the sun, beyond which, rising above a wall of fleecy clouds, looms in the distant view another range of mountains as lofty and precipitous as the Nilgiris themselves.

Pastoral folk, idle and picturesque, they live on the milk and produce of their bufaloes, and, as the unknown is dreaded here as elswehere, their neighbors, who live by the sweat of their brow, much fearing what they do not understand, pay them fees as wizards for value received in occult matters, and as a retaining fee for their aid in counteracting the spells of the dread men of the slopes, who do their business with beasts of prey, track the bison, snare the leopard a fearsome people, whose women "leave their children in the charge of tigers" when they go forth to cultivate the barley and the amaranth and to gather honey in the woods.