“Look here,” she cried passionately, “I laughed at Nellie as you laugh at us. We will go out of this compound, whilst you two dig, or get people to dig, below the front verandah and in front of the steps, and if you don’t find the skeleton of a murdered man, then you may laugh at us for ever.”
With Julia impulse meant action, and before I could say three words I was out of the compound, with my arm wedged under hers; we went and sat on a little stone bridge within a stone’s throw of the bungalow, glum and silent enough. What a Christmas Day! Half an hour’s delay was as much as Julia’s patience could brook. We then retraced our steps and discovered what seemed to be the whole village in the dâk bungalow compound. Frank came hurrying towards us, waving us frantically away. No need for questions; his face was enough. They had found it.
Frank Goodchild had known him—he was in his own department, a promising and most popular young fellow; his name was Gordon Forbes; he had been missed but never traced, and there was a report that he had been gored and killed in the jungle by a wild buffalo. In the same grave was found the battered despatch-box, by which the skeleton was identified. Mr. Goodchild and my husband re-interred the body under a tree, and read the Burial Service over it, Nellie and I and all the village patriarchs attending as mourners. The khansamah was eagerly searched for—alas! in vain. He disappeared from that part of the country, and was said to have been devoured by a tiger in the Jhanas jungles; but this is too good to be true. We left the hateful bungalow with all speed that same afternoon, and spent the remainder of the Christmas Day at Chanda; it was the least merry Christmas we ever remembered. The Goodchilds and ourselves have subscribed and placed a granite cross, with his name and the date of his death, over Gordon Forbes’s lonely grave, and the news of the discovery of the skeleton was duly forwarded to the proper authorities, and also to the unfortunate young man’s relations, and to these were sent the despatch-box, letters, and ring.
Mrs. Duff was full of curiosity concerning our trip. We informed her that we spent Christmas at Chanda, as we had originally intended, with our husbands, that they had provided an excellent dinner of black buck and jungle fowl, that the plum-pudding surpassed all expectations; but we never told her a word about our two nights’ halt at Dakor bungalow.
“THE OTHER MISS BROWNE.”
“Here’s my hand.
And mine, with my heart in’t.”
The Tempest.
Tom Galway (of the Princess’s Own Pea Green Pioneers) had evidently some weighty matter on his mind, as he lounged in a long chair in his verandah, nursing a veteran fox-terrier, and puffing furiously at a “Trichy” cheroot. Perhaps Tom was endeavouring to accustom himself to his new honours? His step was in that day’s Gazette, and for the last four hours he had been entitled to write “captain” at either end of his signature. He was a broad-shouldered, well set-up young man of eight-and-twenty, with sleepy-looking grey eyes, closely-cropped black hair, and a luxuriant moustache; his countenance was more remarkable for placid contentment than for brilliant intelligence. To tell the honest truth, Tom was not particularly sharp; he had only scraped through his examinations and mastered the drill-book by what he called “the skin of his teeth,” and with extraordinary (and to him) exhaustive mental exertions. His best friend never thought Tom Galway clever, but he was sporting, good-natured, and good-tempered. He never made a joke at any one’s expense—possibly because he could not—and he never said an ill word of mortal; he was slow, his thoughts moved languidly and took some time to grasp a subject; his blunders, literary and social, were the delight of the mess; but he was a reliable officer, a keen sportsman, and “Old Tom” was one of the most popular fellows in the “Princess’s Own Pioneers.” Tom was in the unfortunate condition common to a few other subalterns—Tom was impecunious; he did not gamble, bet, or drink; he kept no stud beyond a gaunt old caster, who enjoyed the appropriate name of “Barebones;” his clothes were latterly—tell it not in Gath—manufactured in his own verandah. Where the money went to was one of the desperate problems that frequently puzzled poor Tom; not that there was so much to go—two hundred and fifty rupees a month. Innocent British reader, if you like to do a nice little mental sum, a rupee is one shilling and threepence. Alas! alas! for the good old days, when the beloved coin was worth two shillings; woe, woe to those who have to remit money home. Luckily, Tom Galway was spared this harrowing experience. Of what was Tom thinking so earnestly? Of the burning currency question? Of his debts? Of his new responsibilities? Whatever his thoughts were, they suddenly culminated in action, for he cast away his cheroot, flung down the dog, went into the interior of his bungalow, dragged out a well-preserved leather writing-case and sat himself down before it. At this moment another young man, riding a lean chestnut pony, and dressed in cricket flannels and a gaudy striped coat, galloped up under the porch, as if he was being hotly pursued by a pack of wolves. Throwing the reins to a panting syce, he shouted—