to advise with me as to what should be done in this untoward emergency. I
endeavoured to console him as well as I could, and suggested, that if the
worst came to the worst, the part might be read. But, lugubriously shaking
his caput, Fred declared that would never do; so, after discussing
half-a-dozen Trichinopoly cheroots, with a proportionate quantum of brandy
_pani_, he departed for his quarters. "disgusted," as he said, "with the
ingratitude of mankind," whilst I set forth to go my grand rounds.

Next morning, having been relieved from guard, I had returned home, and
was taking my ease in my camp chair, luxuriously whiffing away at my
after-breakfast cheroot, when who should step gingerly into the room but
Manager Fred Gahagan. The clouds of the previous evening had entirely
disappeared from his ingenuous countenance, which was puckered up in the
most insinuating manner, with what I was wont to call his 'borrowing
smile;' for Fred was oftentimes afflicted with impecuniosity--a complaint
common enough amongst us subs;--and when the fit was on him, in the spirit
of true friendship, he generally contrived to disburthen me of the few
remaining rupees that constituted the balance of my last month's pay.

Fred brought himself to an anchor upon a bullock trunk, and, after my boy
had handed him a cheroot, and he had disgorged a few puffs of smoke, thus
delivered himself--

"This is a capital weed, Wilmot. I don't know how it is, but you always
manage to have the best tobacco in the cantonment."

"Hem," said I, drily. "Glad you like it."

"I say, Peter, my dear fellow," quoth he, "Fitzgerald, Grimes, and I, have
just been talking over what we were discussing last night, about Lady