that I should go up with him to Casalong to see Ruttun Pooiya and enter into some amicable agreement. There was a steam-launch, or small

gun-boat, at our disposal, which enabled Graham to go up and down the river at his convenience. No doubt this gun-boat, with its steamwhistle and its brass three-pounder, had made some impression on the minds of the hill-men; and the echo of the gun, which was fired every morning and evening by Captain Maclean, who commanded and engineered the steamer, was regarded as a symbol of British authority. Ruttun Pooiya was known to be very much interested in the steamer; Major Graham had let him have a trip in it, while Captain Maclean had taught him to sound the steam-whistle and to fire the gun with his own hand. Ruttun Pooiya and Captain Maclean had also baptized their friendship with strong potations of rum, for which they both had a liking.

When Graham and I arrived at Casalong we were received by the guard and escorted through the stockade, to take up our abode in the superintendent's house. This house was very like Robinson Crusoe's castle. It was built some thirty feet above the ground, supported on the trunks of large forest trees, still growing with all their branches overhead, supplemented by extra supports where necessary.

We

climbed up the bamboo ladder or staircase into the ante-room or hall that led into a good-sized sitting-room, behind which there were two bed-rooms. It was fairly comfortable, although the floors made of split bamboo seemed rather elastic at first. Here we established ourselves, and had a good dinner and slept well, only disturbed towards morning by the screeching and calling of a tribe of Oolook monkeys in the adjacent forest.

It was arranged that Ruttun Pooiya should be introduced to me after breakfast. I put on my blue and gold political uniform, with cocked hat and sword, whilst Graham was arrayed in

The

full military dress. When Ruttun Pooiya had climbed up into our room he was rather awed at first by our costumes, especially as he had never seen Graham in his uniform. However he soon recovered himself. He was a strong and well-built man about 5 ft. 8 in. in height. His features were regular, not in the least like those of the common hill-men, and he wore a dress, chiefly of white muslin, like that of an ordinary Bengali landowner. We soon got to business, Graham acting as interpreter. chief difficulty lay in settling about the restitution of captives who had been carried off in former raids. Some general terms being arranged, it was proposed that we should drink the Queen's health, and a bottle of champagne with three tumblers was produced. Following our example Ruttun Pooiya drained his glass, but the sparkling liquid puzzled and almost choked him. However when he had got over his surprise, he promptly held out his glass for a further supply, and had evidently taken a great liking to it.

In the course of the conversation it occurred to me that it would be a very good thing for Ruttun Pooiya to take him down to Chittagong and show him some of the wonders of civilization of which he was utterly ignorant. We put it to him that courtesy and etiquette required him to return my visit; and that it would be for his advantage to know more of us before he ratified the agreement which we proposed to make. I promised him that on the third day after his leaving Casalong he should be brought back in safety and landed there. Luckily he had none of his muntris, or ministers, with him to dissuade him. He sent for two of his personal servants to bring his baggage on board the steamer; and as soon as we ourselves could embark, we set off at full speed towards Chittagong.

So soon as his natural trepidation caused by the novelty of the situation had worn off, Ruttun Pooiya was delighted. When after a few hours

rapid steaming we emerged from the hills and passed through the plain country he admired every thing; and when we reached the port of Chittagong, where numerous ships were lying, he was much puzzled, and asked if they were mountains. When we landed, we sent him off in a palkee to the lines of the military police, in which, as has been already mentioned, some of his own countrymen were enrolled, so that he had confidence in them; whilst the Sikh native officers, under Major Graham's orders, entertained him till late in the night with feasting and dancing and singing, for which we provided the needful supplies.

The next day he came to visit me. I held a sort of durbar, at which he was invested with the best dress of honour that we could improvise a dark velvet fancy costume, with sword and buckler, and a brocaded turban. I then arranged that he should be taken to see the public offices; and all the bags of silver in the treasury; and our English Church; and the salt go-downs, containing many hundred tons of salt, which greatly impressed a man who had never seen more than a few pounds of salt at a time. By good luck a war-steamer of the Indian navy came into port, and the captain kindly let him go on board and see her big guns-64-pounders-at which he was amazed. He was driven in a

buggy through the principal streets and bazaars, which he greatly enjoyed after he had recovered from the alarm of sitting behind a horse for the first time in his life. When he came again to see me in the evening his professions of delight were unbounded. He passed another festive night with his friends in the military police-lines; and on the morning of the third day Major Graham took him on board the gun-boat, and carried him back to Casalong as we had promised. It is hardly necessary to say that so long as Major Graham was superintendent of the hill-tribes Ruttun Pooiya and the Looshais remained on the best of terms with us. Other officers have in the last twenty-five years succeeded Major Graham and ruled over the hills. Ruttun Pooiya has been dead for many years; and it is not in my power to explain why there has been an interruption of our amicable relations with the hill-men; or why they have again taken to raiding on the inoffensive villagers of the plains. The military expedition has already been successful beyond expectation; and I venture to hope that a peaceable mode of negotiation may succeed in bringing the tribes to submission without our having further recourse to the arbitrament of battle.

C. T. BUCKLAND.

THE sun was setting, throwing long shadows from the tall eucalyptus and poplar trees that surrounded the peachorchards, and gilding the distant windows of the great estancia house of Santa Paula. Father Felipe rose from his seat among the peach trees and, thrusting his breviary into the pocket of his soutane, took his way up to the house to await the hour of dinner. Late though it was, there was still work going on in the sheep-corrals as he passed them; for, owing to the revolution that had broken out in Uruguay, labour was scarce that summer, and long hours had to make up for the want of hands. The priest stopped on his way and, leaning against the wooden fence, watched with an absent air a group of some five or six men who were busily catching the lame sheep and paring their overgrown hoofs. All day long the same work had been going on: point after point of sheep had been shut into the narrow enclosure, examined, doctored, and let go, and the flock was not yet finished. Of the thirty or forty men who laboured on the estancia only these few were left; all the rest had either gone to swell the ranks of the revolution or had fled away into hiding to avoid being pressed into the Government service.

"It is growing too dark, Anselmo," grumbled one of the men, rising to his feet and stretching his tired limbs; 66 we shall never finish the work tonight."

Courage, man!" cried the mayordomo, a bustling little fellow who had been doing the work of two men through the day and superintending the work of all. "Come! There are hardly a hundred sheep left now; the flock will soon be done with. Ah, Don Felipe! Good evening to you. Would you like to lend us a hand?

Here is

a knife for you, if you have not got one."

The priest started from his reverie. "Willingly, Anselmo! very willingly, but I do not know how to help you. I am not skilled to this labour." The grumbler looked up. "To this labour, no!" he repeated, mimicking the priest's deprecating tone, "but to eat his dinner-yes! Offer him a knife to eat his dinner, Anselmo, if you want to see him use it. That is what a priest carries a knife for."

The men laughed. Don Felipe pretended not to hear, but the muscles of his face quivered and the hand that grasped the railing shook in spite of his efforts to appear indifferent.

His tormentor cast a mocking glance at him as he passed before him to catch another sheep. "Aha! the fat wether!" he cried presently, dragging the struggling sheep after him by the leg. "Oh, the fat priest! This is the kind of priest that pleases me; this one makes good fat meat and good thick wool; this one deserves his dinner every day. But the other priests! Bah!-if you were to cut all their throats to-morrow you would get nothing by them."

The men laughed again; it mattered little to them what the wit was so long as it was directed against the proper person, and to their ideas a priest was an eminently proper person for ridicule.

"Hold thy tongue, Teofilo!" said the mayor-domo sharply. "Thou knowest that Don Geronimo will not have the father insulted; and if he complains, then it is I who am blamed. Besides, priest or no priest, he is not a bad man that Don Felipe," he added carelessly.

Don Felipe did not hear the remonstrance. Already he was on his way to the house, walking with slow

measured steps that contrasted curiously with the passion that was working in his face. Broken ejaculations started involuntarily from his quivering lips. "They all hate me. They all despise me. What harm have I ever done, what words have I ever spoken to them? The meanest peon on the place thinks that he has the right to insult me!" His hands were feverishly clenched and unclenched, the perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his face flushed a burning red with the heat of shame and powerless indignation. When he was out of sight his steps were more hurried; then suddenly he stopped and paused irresolute, being half minded to return and confront with angry words the men that jeered at him. Thinking better of this impulse he resumed his way to the house, crying out aloud to himself as he went with a kind of angry exultation, "It is not through fear. No! not through fear!" An insult loses half its bitterness if promptly resented and revenged: it is only those that are accepted in silence that remain unhealed, and every fresh wound added to their number starts the old wounds bleeding afresh, smarting with accumulated pain. Perhaps the keenest pang that Felipe felt was the horrible uncertainty whether it was really his cloth alone that prevented him from revenging his pride. "It is not through fear!" he cried to himself. Had he been more sure that fear had no influence with him he would not have felt the necessity of so often telling himself

66

old friend the Vicar-General at Buenos Ayres, and you have sent me a pretty boy. However, his manners are nice, so I will not complain." Felipe's manners were nice, a rare thing among his fraternity, and in that respect at least Doña Apolinaria had no fault to find with the chaplain that her friend had selected for her. It would have been difficult to find in him any other especial qualifications for his post.

The estancia of Santa Paula belonged to the Usabarrenas, one of the richest families of the Republic of Uruguay. At that time the family consisted of three individuals only-Don Geronimo Usabarrena, whose great wealth and influence in the country had made him a likely candidate for the Presidency at more than one election-had he ever been elected he would have made a very honest and perfectly incompetent ruler fortunately both for himself and his country his ambition was not rewarded by success; Doña Apolinaria, his wife, a native of Buenos Ayres, and related to some of the first families of the Argentine Republic; and Elena, their only child, a pretty girl of nineteen, with rather a sullen expression of face and such supercilious manners as befitted so great an heiress. Geronimo Usabarrena was a good-natured, godless old heathen, who feared and respected no man, but only his wife. Political troubles had exiled the family from Monte Video for more than two years, and obliged them to live altogether on their country estate. Had the truth been told, Usabarrena was not sorry to escape from the constant worry and anxiety of the intrigues with which his wife's ambition surrounded him; as it was he did his utmost to reconcile her to her temporary seclusion, even to the extent of building a chapel for her (for Doña Apolinaria was a devout woman and constant in her religious duties) and allowing her to send to her old home in Buenos Ayres for a priest. Thus it had been that Felipe had entered on his first duties in his profession.

He had come there straight from the religious seminary in which he had been educated, and which he had entered at the age of ten. Of his childhood he had but the vaguest recollection. Always, so far as he could remember, he had lived with the same old woman; always in the same dingy street, always in the same dark little house that no one entered but themselves. He supposed the old woman to have been his grandmother -why he supposed her to be so, he did not remember, nor did he remember anything very clearly about her except that she beat him occasionally with a leather strap kept for that purpose. The strap and the old woman had become inseparable in his memory; he never thought of one without the other, and the general impression left on his mind by his infancy was that he had been brought up by a leather strap aided by an old woman. He did not know the names of his parents; his father he had never heard of; his mother he had

seen but once. A very handsome woman, of uncertain age, and rather stout; her voice was harsh and disagreeable, and her dress astonished even his childish eyes-but not all the powder and paint with which it was daubed could hide the extraordinary beauty of her face. The old woman had fallen ill and this unknown lady came to visit her. As she came out of the bedroom, she took the small boy by the hand and led him to the window.

"Thou art Felipe?"

"Yes, lady," he said with timid hesitation.

"Thou art a good boy?" "Yes, lady," but with more hesitation, being mindful of the strap.

"Wouldst like to be a priest?" "Lady, I do not know," he stammered with wide open eyes.

"It is good-thou art going to be a priest. Thou must be good and learn. Is it not so? Look at me-I am thy mother. What a wretched little creature it is!" she added with rather

Long afterwards Felipe could recall the rough feeling of those hard red lips that just touched his cheekperhaps as it was the only time in his life that he had ever been kissed, it was only natural that he should remember it.

The next day a priest came to take him away. Whether the old woman died or lived, he never knew, nor was there any one whom he could ask at the seminary. The misery of all such schools! For more than ten years he lived there, herded with boys whom some physical defect or other failing had driven to that refuge, or who, like himself, had to bear the burden of their parents' sins; poor wretched little mortals, with a pitiful precocity in evil, who had known little or no kindness in their wretched little lives, and whose only idea of enjoyment was the fulfilment of the instinctive desire to inflict torture and suffering on the weakest among themselves. Fortunately their fellowship had but little influence on Felipe for good or evil: as a child he had lived a life of repression and loneliness, and at school he shrank away from the companionship of other boys into the solitude of his own thoughts. He was too small when he first came among them to be molested, and by the time he grew older they had become accustomed to leave him alone. Ten years is a long time at that age, and for ten years the seminary was Felipe's home. It is possible that he did try to carry out the admirable precepts of his mother, for he gave but little trouble to his teachers, was always good and did his best to learn; it is possible also that by so doing he gave pleasure to his mother, but if he did she made no sign of it, for he never saw her or heard of her again. The time came for him to leave the seminary and take a priest's vows. The change for him was merely the outward one of tonsure and soutane; his renunciation of the joys and