spend much over a garden which they may have to leave at any time. India is never "home": there is no "home" to be proud of there, and to beautify. In the General's garden there were hedges and bowers of roses, and hundreds of pots of violets, all well watered by an energetic mali; but even they were not like English ones, for they had no smell.

India has been summed up as a "land in which everything smells except its flowers." In the early morning one misses so the earthy smell, the exquisite, moist, fresh scent of daybreak.

While we were at Mian Mir I drove one day into Lahore with Miss, who was one of the houseparty, our principal object being to get some money out of the bank. On our return Miss locked the notes into her dressing-bag, meaning to settle up some accounts the following day. What followed should show every one the impossibility of trusting native servants, unless they have been proved worthy. Miss went upstairs at night as usual, undressed, and was soon in bed, with Terry, her little terrier, curled up on a rug on the floor near her. Suddenly she heard a slight movement behind the curtain, and then another! Surely it could not be fancy?—yet Terry never stirred. She sat up in bed-why, the curtains had moved and there was a space between, through which the dim light shone; and there was something else what was it? A face-surely not-not a human face, with glaring eyes? Was she dreaming? She seized her match-box and hastily

struck a match-damp! another-damp! another! She always put three out ready by the box. The curtain shook; something-what!-came from behind it a noiseless step: it was a figure. In the semi-darkness she sprang out of bed, and at the same moment the figure of a native sprang forward with a knife in his hand. . . . Miss with a good loud shriek and plenty of pluck, went straight for him, and they grappled together near the wall; but her screams roused the house at once, and the main object of the ruffian was to get off. He cut her hand badly, and, breaking from her grasp, dashed down a passage and through an open window, out into the compound; an exciting chase followed, and in the end he was caught by the servants. He proved to be the cook's mate, and had, of course, known of the money being taken out of the bank. Little Terry had been drugged, which accounted for his apathy and apparent deafness. The thought of the man's having lain behind the curtain while Miss undressed was an unpalatable one. He was given-I forget how many years'-penal servitude in Lahore Jail.

We drove over there one morning to see the prisoners making carpets, eventually to be sold at about a pound a square yard. Some of them, with colours admirably blended, were magnificent; others were flaringly crude. The prisoners, with feet tied as a rule, sat in rows at the big looms, twisting a hundred balls of coloured wool.

On February 17th M. and I left Mian Mir and went off to Peshawur, where we stayed with my sister and her husband, W. R. Merk, C.S.I., who was then Acting-Commissioner vice Sir Richard Udny. From the flat roof of the Commissioner's bungalow, the best bungalow in Peshawur, we had a fine view of the whole country round, and at last saw in all its reality the far-famed frontier, embodiment of a word which had been printed as a newspaper heading in England larger than any other word for months past. The cantonments lay in front of us-to the west; the walled native city was behind us; the racecourse on our right; while all round Peshawur stretched a well-cultivated plain almost entirely bordered by hills. Those lying on our right, particularly, and those facing us, looked beautiful enough in the bright sun, all the topmost peaks white with snow; but as we rode or drove nearer them the grey crags and the dark defiles become defined, and mountain after mountain assumes an impenetrable and a dreary aspect.

No one could live in Peshawur and be unconscious of that Debatable Land only thirteen or fourteen miles distant, nor help peopling with Afridis, Yusufzais, and other hill tribes, those weird heights forming their fastnesses which had been the scene of so many struggles with the British. One little break in the chain, the entrance to the Khyber, interested us more than any other spot.

The Peshawur Vale is so much enclosed by mountains that it is hardly odd that it should develop into