"'And the boy?' I asked eagerly.
"'Dead by this time, I expect,' replied the doctor shortly. 'Come on,--there's a good fellow,--we haven't a moment to lose. I must look again for the flower to-morrow.'
"But letters awaiting our return to camp recalled him to duty on account of cholera in the regiment; so there was an end of anemone hunting. The 101st suffered terribly, and Taylor was in consequence hotter than ever over experiments. The result you know."
"Yes, poor fellow! but the anemone? I don't understand how it came here."
My friend paused. "That is the odd thing. I was looking after the funeral and all that, for Taylor and I were great friends--he left me that herbarium in memory of our time in Cashmere. Well, when I went over to the house about an hour before to see everything done properly, his bearer brought me one of those little flat straw baskets the natives use. It had been left during my absence, he said, by a young Brahman, who assured him that it contained something which the great doctor sahib had been very anxious to possess, and which was now sent by some one to whom he had been very kind.
"'You told him the sahib was dead, I suppose?' I asked.
"'This slave informed him that the master had gained freedom, but he replied it was no matter, as all his task was this.' On opening the basket I found a gourd such as the disciples carry round for alms, and in it, planted among gypsum debris, was that anemone; or rather that is a part of it, for I put some in Taylor's coffin."
"Ah! I presume the gosain--Victor Emanuel, I think you called him--sent the plant; he knew of the doctor's desire?"
"Perhaps. The bearer said the Brahman was a very handsome boy, very fair, dressed in the usual black antelope skin of the disciple. It is a queer story anyhow--is it not?"