A WANDERING SOUL

BOUT five o'clock in the evening of June 14th, 185-, the military station of Kotsial, in India; was slowly awakening from the daytime siesta. White-clothed, white-faced men were to be seen walking their ponies-for it was too hot to move at any other pace--along the hard pucca road that went the whole length of the station, and there joined the Grand Trunk Road which traversed India from Calcutta to Peshawur. All nature bore witness to the intense heat: dusty, brown-leaved trees, grass shrivelled to tinder-even the cactus hedges, which seemed to guard with jealous care some of the bungalows, scarcely showed any green through the mantle of dust that covered them; the very ground seemed to exhale the heat that the day had poured into it, and though the sun was now low and long shadows were creeping along the ground, the stifling atmosphere was well-nigh unendurable.

Amongst others who were riding towards the band for it was a band nightwere two young fellows who had been some years in India. They had come out before the great mutiny of 1857 and joined their regiment, and with it had served through those troublous times; they had been schoolfellows together, and were warmly attached the one to the other, although they differed as much in appearance as they did in character. Gage was short and strongly built, a good cricketer and very popular in the regiment-good-natured to a fault, often taking the unpopular side to shield any one who might unwittingly have broken some unwritten regimental law. At the siege of Delhi Gage had been wounded somewhat severely, but had now quite recovered. His companion was tall, thin, the scion of an old Cornish family who for many generations had given their sons to be food for powder. None of the family had ever risen to distinction in the service, for they were a tactless race, with strong prejudices, quick and sulky tempers, men who seldom remembered kindnesses and never forgot or forgave slights. As the two friends rode along they

talked over their next day's expedition: they had two months' leave, and were bound for the fair valley of Cashmere; their dak was laid, their traps all packed, and they were anxiously discussing the weather, for the rains were just due, and they hoped. before they burst to be far over the snow hills whose tops were visible on a fine, clear evening from the station of Kotsial. Next morning, long before the sun was up, the two were off on their journey. The weather for once was propitious. They reached the far-off snows, climbed the Pir Punjal, and from its summit looked back on the plains, shrouded by a pall of dusty heat, into which the sun sank in a ball of fire. A few days more saw them safely housed in Srinaggar, in one of the bungalows above the first bridge, which, owing to the consideration of the Maharajah, had been built for the accommodation of itinerant Englishmen.

For some three weeks all went well. The friends each had a boat, for in Srinaggar no one ever thinks of walking. When Crass was not fishing they made the regular excursions: went to the shawl shops; interviewed old Suffile Babu, prince of shawl merchants; went down the river through the seven bridges, and down to the Wulur lake, where they saw the mountains rise sheer out of the water till they towered in the everlasting blue some twenty-two thousand feet above their heads. They tried to shoot black bears in the mulberry trees; and though Gage was lucky enough to get a couple, Crass missed his chance, owing, as his friend laughingly averred, to his mistaking by the evening light a drop of perspiration on the end of his nose-a peculiarity of our hero-for the sight of his rifle.

When they got back to Srinaggar they found the place in commotion, for the Maharajah Gholab Singh was just dead. He was an old man, and had ruled over the Cashmeerees for many years. He had been virtually given his kingdom as a eward for his betrayal of his master Runjeet Singh, the celebrated Lion of the Punjab. Though Gholab Singh died full of years, those over whom he had ruled had no reason to bless his reign, for his cruelties had made him abhorrent in the eyes of the people. One of his masterpieces of vindictive cruelty was the placing men in large wooden cages attached to the piers of the first bridge, just over the water, where they were fed daily, and allowed to die that most horrible of deaths-death by thirst; and the agonies of that death were aggravated by seeing the cool, flowing stream of the river close underneath them. This horrible torture was inflicted on men, not for the committal of any crime, but for non-payment of the heavy taxes which Gholab extorted from the people. Of course, when Englishmen were in Srinaggar there were no occupants of the cages-made of bars of wood throughout-which were to be seen attached to the bridge immediately above the palace, ready and waiting for victims when Srinaggar should be clear of the English.

What Gholǝb Singh's exact tenets of faith were it is unnecessary to inquire. Suffice it to say that, when he was dead, the priests, who firmly believed in the doctrines of transmigration, held an important function to discover the exact whereabouts of Gholab's soul. For a long time the matter was debated, when an accident decided the knotty point. A very large mahaseer was seen close to the palace steps. Here was the solution of the difficulty, and the priests declared that at the moment of Gholab's decease a bird had captured the soul of the dead monarch, or, vice versa, the soul had captured the bird; that the bird had flown up the river to a mulberry tree; that there the soul, apparently disliking its new habitation, had gone into a ripe mulberry, which, when it had become possessed of the precious burden, dropped into the river. Under the mulberry tree, waiting for ripe mulberries, swam a large mahaseer this fish swallowed the mulberry with Gholab inside, and, becoming conscious of its new dignity, immediately went down the river and took up its abode as near the palace as it could. What lent additional weight to this theory-in fact,