"When you grow a little older," said Mrs Bosenna icily, "you'll know that anything can be done with roses in these days-with proper precautions. Why "-she turned to Captain Cai-"I've planted out roses in July month-in pots, of course. You break the pots in the October following. But there must be precautions."

"Meanin' manure."

"Cow," interposed Dinah tersely, "it's the best. Pig comes next, for various reasons.'

"We need not go into details," said Mrs Bosenna. "I sent down a cartload this morning and had it well dug in.

Provided you dig it deep enough, and don't let it touch the young roots

"I thank you kindly, ma'am," said Captain Cai, "and so will my friend 'Bias Hunken when he hears of it."

"Ah, my other tenant?—or tenant in prospect, I ought to say. He has not arrived

yet, I understand."

"He's due tomorrow, ma'am, by th' afternoon

train."

way of speaking at times. "Who wants to catch him?"

"You don't take my meanin', ma'am, if you'll excuse me,' floundered Captain Cai in a sweat. sweat. "I ought to ha' said that 'Bias, though one in a thousand, is terrible shy with females-or ladies, as I should say.'

"He'll be all the more welcome for that," said Mrs Bosenna relentlessly. "You must certainly bring him, Captain Hocken."

Before he could protest further, she had shaken hands, gathered up trowel and kneeling pad, given them into Dinah's keeping, unpinned and shaken down the skirt of her black gown, and was gonegone up the twilit path, her handmaiden following,-gone with a fleeting smile that, while ignoring Fancy Tabb, left Captain Cai strangely perturbed, so nicely it struck a balance between understanding and aloofness.

He rubbed his chin, then his ear, then the back of his neck. "Lord!" he groaned suddenly, "where was my manners?"

ONLY a few months have passed since the majestic ceremonial at Delhi, when, surrounded by the chiefs and people of India, and greeted with wonderful enthusiasm, the King in person took his place upon the Imperial throne.

Some of us may feel that at such a time it is undesirable to revive the memories of the great revolt which half a century ago shook the British rule to its foundations. That rule now seems firmly based not only upon military strength but upon the loyalty of the Indian people. Better, it has been said, to let bygones be bygones; to forget all the old quarrels, and to think only of the new era of peace and goodwill which the King's visit has inaugurated.

That is perhaps a kindly and generous sentiment; but surely it is not a sound one. Our fathers fought, and many died, for their country, for us; and the memory of their deeds is a sacred trust. We are in honour bound to guard it faithfully, and hand it down to our children. Nor is this all. Throughout the war many thousands of Indian soldiers fought for the British cause. We should be unjust and ungrateful to them if we allowed their services to be forgotten. Finally, we have

no right to neglect for any sentiment the lessons which the Mutiny teaches-perhaps the most important of them all being the lesson that if we are to do our duty to India itself we must be strong; that weakness or vacillation may at any time bring not only upon us but upon the natives of India woeful disasters and sufferings.

It would be difficult to insist too strongly upon that last point. The temporary paralysis of British power in 1857 meant untold misery to thousands of Englishmen, and, alas! to a great company of English women and children; but it meant untold misery to a far greater number of Indians. Wherever disorder broke out it was the Indian even more than the Englishman who paid the penalty. Many instances could be given from Forrest's book1 to show how the native population suffered. Take, for example, the case of Rohilcund. When the native regiments had risen, and murdered or driven away the white people, the whole province fell into anarchy. "The Muhammadans," says Forrest, "robbed and murdered the Hindus. . . . A native witness states: Villages were being burnt and plundered daily; the roads deserted, and no man's life or

property was safe for a moment.' Rohilcund was no exception to the rule. What happened there happened elsewhere. The population had not then been disarmed, nor had they forgotten the ancient feuds which the reign of British law had for a time restrained. When they saw that our native troops had broken away from our control, and that we were powerless to maintain order, they reverted to their old ways, and turned their weapons against each other. Devastated homes, and bloodshed, and horrors of all kinds, were the natural result; and millions of innocent people, men and women and children, had cause to mourn that outburst of savagery.

We must make sure, for their sake as well as our own, that our rule is not shaken again; and to that end it behoves us to study with deep attention the history of those unhappy days.

If rightly studied it will not embitter us against the people of India. When one section of the country blazed into sudden revolt, the other sections, though excited and more or less disturbed, did not generally follow its example. Of the three great "Presidencies into which British India was divided, Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, the last two were practically untouched by the revolt; and even in the first there was much difference of feeling and action. In the north the Punjab, though but recently conquered, stood firm

to its new allegiance. Its people had little in common with "the Eastern man," ," the Poorbea sepoy. Indeed they detested him, as the instrument of their own fall eight years before. Lower Bengal again, to the to the south-east, with its vast and unwarlike population, held aloof from the mutineers. The reign of disorder was in fact confined to the central portion of the Presidency and its contiguous Native States. If any one will look at the map of India, and mark the portions over which the revolt really established itself, he will see that a comparatively small part of the Indian peninsula was involved. It is true that the part involved was a specially important part, including the Moghul capital. The old saying that whoever holds the valley of the Ganges holds India, is not far wrong; and when the valley of the Ganges was largely in the hands of the mutinous Bengal army there was unrest all over the country. But still the temporary overthrow of British power was practically confined to the central part of Upper India. The bulk of the Indian population remained loyal or passive.

Further, it must always be remembered that even in the districts affected, except in Oudh, where the recent annexation had turned all classes against us, the revolt was rather a military mutiny than a popular upheaval. No doubt some of the petty chiefs and landowners, led away by am

bition, or by resentment at some supposed wrong, or simply whirled down the stream of disorder, threw in their lot with the rebels. Among them were two or three of our bitterest enemies. No doubt also the populace at times sided with the mutineers; and some of the worst deeds of massacre and brutality were the work, not of soldiers, but of city mobs or villagers. But even in the disturbed country vast numbers of the agricultural population, the real India, took no part in the rising. Some sheltered and protected at the risk of their lives white men who were being hunted down by the mutineers, and did what they could to help in the restoration of order. If here and there horrible cruelties were perpetrated, we may well pause to remember what history has to tell of similar occurrences in Christian Europe, and to think what might be the result if the mobs of our European cities, the scourings of our prisons and slums, were set free for a time to work their will. Imagine above all what would be the fate of a race of foreign conquerors, alien in blood and colour, if their military power were suddenly overthrown, and their lives and property placed at the mercy of the most undisciplined and brutal classes of a country in Europe.

from our control, and the total extirpation of the British seemed possible, if not probable, the mass of the Indian people under much temptation at times-abstained from joining in the attack upon the white man, who had tried to rule them with justice. And some of them did more. Of the great ruling chiefs not one joined the rebels, and many did all they could to help us. Native troops fought shoulder to shoulder, against almost impossible odds, with our sorely tried British soldiery; native camp - followers and servants showed in numberless instances the most unselfish devotion and courage. How we should have held India without the aid of native Indians, from princes to peasants, it is difficult to imagine.

Perhaps Englishmen who have not been in India do not fully understand how much we owed to our native troops. The most important episode of the whole war was the siege of Delhi, when a small British force seized upon the historic Ridge, and standing its ground for months against the incessant attacks of an enemy outnumbering it by three or four to one enemy trained and disciplined by our own officers, finally stormed the imperial city and planted the British flag on the palace of the Moghuls. What proportion of that British force consisted of white men? Not one-half-not much more than

an

The rest were natives