sacrifice of comfort is to him as nothing, as, conscious of the sensation his appearance creates, he swaggers blandly down the street, smoking one of my cheroots.

I call him to me and administer the wigging he wants. I wish I could do justice to the figure before me; a sturdy, dark-skinned youth, five foot nothing in height, with masses of black hair drawn off his face and neck, coiled in a loose shaggy 'young' or knot on the top of his head. His garments are but two; a red cotton putsoe, tucked tightly up round his thighs as if to conceal it as much as possible, and a superannuated black tail-coat, built for a six-foot Briton, which hangs from his shoulders in graceful amplitude. The sleeves are turned back to show the now ragged lining halfway up to the elbows. The buttons are ignored, but the pockets are hardly equal to the strain on their capacity. Those useful receptacles have been taxed by the owner to their utmost extent. His betel box-a lacquer-ware trifle, four inches in diameter and depth-rattles against his calves secure in the depths of one back coat-bag' as he calls the tail pocket, and a couple of spoons and the tin cutter keep it company. The other contains a few useful sundries belonging to himself and to me, but why he has bestowed them there he has no explanation to give, and their variety is so wide that I will not hazard a guess.

6

The inventory comprises, amongst other items, two dusters and his own linen jacket (all dirty), a few boxes of matches, one large mango, a couple more spoons, and an assortment of discharged cartridge cases! As Moung Tso, fraught with apologies, sinks respectfully upon his heels, the contents of his pockets are more extravagantly in his way than ever, and, hidden to the tips of his ears in the turned-up collar, he looks like a large and ugly species of monkey. Crestfallen and humbled, he retires to a corner, and, after discharging the cargo I have detailed above, divests himself of his finery, which he rolls into the tightest possible parcel, evidently feeling his now snubbed condition unequal to supporting the grandeur of his coat for the present.

'We have not heard anything more about the dacoits, Moung Daw,' I say by way of turning the subject.

"I think Shway Hmaw was telling lies,' says the goung confidentially. 'I do not think dacoits would attack my village.'

'Then you will be able to get men to row my boat back to Bassein to-morrow?'

'I will ask them, but they are too much afraid upon account of your honour.'

My honour is bent upon getting away by the early tide tomorrow, however, and convinces Moung Daw of this. In spite of the loss of his confidence in Shway Hmaw, who is a reliable man enough as his race goes, the goung is very nervous after darkness sets in, and actually forgets himself so far during the night as to wake me with anxious inquiries as to whether I hear guns! This looks serious, for, under ordinary circumstances, no Burman will forcibly awaken a sleeping man; believing that the 'life' during sleep takes temporary flight from the body in the form of a butterfly which is invisible to mortal eyes and uncertain in its movements. So if a man be pinched or shaken during the absence of the butterfly, he will never awake again.

No dacoits disturb our rest to-night, and by morning everyone seems to have forgotten the news that startled him twenty-four hours before. And as my boat pushes off into the stream, the wind bears to me Moung Daw's last farewell.

'Speak well of your honour's servants to his honour the Deputy Commissioner, and bring two egg-shaped white glass bottles (i.e. soda water) next time you come.'

COMPANIONSHIP.

AFTER some thought that leaped life's boundary
Unto that icy night that broods afar,

Beyond the gleam of the remotest star,
The night from whence we came and whither flee,
A gulf of darkness and vacuity;

Ultimate dread and doom of all that are,

With which the throbbing pulses are at war, As a scared child affrighted by the sea;

With what a shuddering speed we seek again
The living contact of our own home-fire,
Whose ruddy comfort bickers higher and higher,
Round which the dear familiar faces stand,

Clasping the warmth of reassuring hand,
Happy to be aware of even pain!

A TUMBLER OF MILK.

Trifles make the sum of human things.'

SYBIL was to dine late. She had never dined late in her life before. That is not to say that Miss Sybil Latimer had never been present during a part or even the whole of that solemn function ushered in nightly by the roll of the gong at eight o'clock. Sybil was an only child and had her privileges, the chief of which was to be the companion of her parents at all times and seasons when not actually engaged in the pursuit of knowledge; but with that stern upholder of etiquette, her mother, all such liberty must be acknowledged as liberty, all relaxations and indulgences recognised as relaxations and indulgences, and even sitting up to dinner must never be called 'dining late.'

Thus up to the present time.

But Sybil was now trembling on the verge of womanhood; her eighteenth birthday, that great birthday in a girl's life, was at hand, and even Lady Georgina allowed that it was time to acknowledge as rights what had hitherto been winked at as irregularities.

The world must be apprised that the heiress was about to step across the Rubicon.

On a like occasion Lady Georgina's nieces, the blooming Mary and Isabella, who won Sybil's envy and admiration, had each been granted a ball of her own, a ball to which half the county had been invited, and at which the fair débutante had reigned as queen; but a ball for Sybil was not to be contemplated for a

moment.

'For a delicate creature like her it would be madness, absolute madness,' quoth Colonel Latimer, who took to the full as much charge of his daughter as though she had had no other parent. 'My dear'—to his wife-'you would not, you surely would not think of it,' continued he, stammering with anxiety and consternation. For the idea had been mooted in his presence, and had made the few remaining hairs on his head stand on end with fright.

Her ladyship, however, was quite of his own mind on the subject.

A ball was the last thing she would think of; Sybil would be sure to be overheated, overstrained, overdone in every way. A ball meant a vast amount of fatigue and risk, and a ball dress on a December evening every kind of ill to which the flesh is heir. Then for a ball, the great rooms and all the long, echoing, draughty corridors with which Latimer Hall bristled, would have to be thrown open, and Sybil would have to thread them with the rest. Terrible thought. Last, but not least, who in the neighbourhood was there worthy of leading the heiress on to the floor?

Sir Robert Dovercourt certainly, but unluckily Sir Robert was not a dancing man, and was moreover seldom to be had when wanted. If wanted for a ball, or a picnic, or any sort of festal gathering of the proper, orthodox, family kind, the young baronet might almost be reckoned upon to have another engagement,' and Lady Georgina was not the person to like being met by 'another engagement.' Failing Dovercourt, Godfrey Hanbury was the next in succession, and it was a long step from the one to the other. Sybil's mother, who thought hardly anybody could ever be good enough to touch the hem of her daughter's garment, drew up her own beautiful neck at the bare idea of Godfrey, and she and her husband finally agreed together in parental conclave that a dinner party—a formal, frigid, stately dinner party, at which all the old silver and china should be in use, and for which the invitations should be issued weeks beforehand—was the only suitable, sensible, and rational mode of celebrating their darling's entrance into the world.

'Sybil,' quoth the old soldier, shaking his grizzled head-he had not married early, and was now in his sixty-fifth year— Sybil is a fragile flower; no adverse wind must ever blow upon her. Balls and theatres are for girls of another kind. Great, strong, robust young women,' proceeded he, with ineffable contempt, may be able to enjoy such amusements, and derive no injury from them. I am not speaking for others. I am not dictating to other parents; but our daughter is cast in a mould of her own. A delicate, shrinking, sensitive creature,' waving his hand gently to and fro; a mere puff of thistledown-that is our Sybil. She is a charge, a great charge. It is our duty to guard, protect, ward off every roughness, every sharpness from her tender frame. And now, now that she has reached the age when dangers of another kind are likely to assail her, we must redouble our exertions. Sybil will be sought after, run after, raced after.