to get through it with any credit. I left Anne--whom at that moment
I hated--to seek information from the servants, which she did with a
valiant disregard of her entire lack of knowledge of Hindustani, a
language she stubbornly refused to learn a word of. The last I saw of
her she had seized the _khansamah's_ young assistant and was shouting
at him, "Chokra--ye impident little black deevil, will you tell this
moment, has there been an accident?" Backwards and forwards I went in
the verandah, then down the steps to the road, straining my eyes to
see and my ears to hear something--what I did not know. From the
garden the scent of the roses and mignonette came to me in the soft
Indian darkness. I ventured a little bit along the road, too anxious
to remember, or, remembering, to care, that I had no lantern, and that
at any moment I might tread on a snake. I could only think of one
thing, and how often I pictured it! Mr. Royle coming back, and the
natives carrying someone--someone who didn't laugh any more. The odd
thing was I didn't seem to mind at all what happened to kind Mrs.
Royle. It was Boggley, and only Boggley, that mattered to me. Of
course nothing did happen to anyone. It isn't when one expects and
dreads it that tragedy comes. Tragedy comes quietly, swiftly. I
remember going to see a fisherman's widow in a little village on the
stormy east coast. She told me of her husband's death. "I had his tea
a' ready an' a bit buttered toast an' a kipper, but he never cam' in."
That was all--"He never cam' in."

When our wanderers returned they were rather amused than otherwise.
The horse had given trouble and ended by kicking the trap to pieces,
and they had to walk part of the way home. Quite simple, you see; but
the first opportunity I looked in a mirror to see if my hair had not
turned white in a single night, as men's have done through sudden
fear. It hadn't; but I did dream of a water-horse with "an awful