"Nothing would satisfy him but to go out to India, John. There was,
of course, no occasion for it, as he would have this place after
me--a fine estate and a good position: what could he want more?
But he was a curious fellow. Once he formed an opinion there was
no persuading him to change it. He was always getting ideas such
as no one else would think of; he did not care for anything that
other people cared for; never hunted nor shot. He used to puzzle me
altogether with his ways, and, 'pon my word, I was not sorry when
he said he would go to India, for there was no saying how he might
have turned out if he had stopped here. He never could do anything
like anybody else: nothing that he could have done would have
surprised me.

"If he had told me that he intended to be a play actor, or a Jockey,
or a private, or a book writer, I should not have been surprised.
Upon my word, it was rather a relief to me when he said, 'I
have made up my mind to go into the East India Service, father. I
suppose you can get me a cadetship?' At least that was an honorable
profession; and I knew, anyhow, that when he once said 'I have
made up my mind, father,' no arguments would move him, and that if
I did not get him a cadetship he was perfectly capable of running
away, going up to London, and enlisting in one of their white
regiments."

John Thorndyke's own remembrances were that his brother had always
been good natured to him, that he had often told him long stories
about Indian adventures, and that a short time before he went away,
having heard that he had been unmercifully beaten by the schoolmaster
at Reigate for some trifling fault, he had gone down to the town,