her. I see that the present plan is the best, and that I
should have but little sport if I went away to school. Besides, I like
Mr. Bastow very much, and I am quite sure that I shan't get so many
whackings from him as I used to do from old Holbrook."

"I fancy not, Mark," his father said with a smile. "I am not against
wholesome discipline, but I think it can be carried too far; at any
rate, I hope you will be just as obedient to Mr. Bastow as if he always
had a cane on the table beside him."

Mark, therefore, went to work in a cheerful spirit, and soon found that
he made more progress in a week under Mr. Bastow's gentle tuition than
he had done in a month under the vigorous discipline of his former
master. Mr. and Mrs. Greg dined regularly at the Squire's once a week.

"Have you had that Indian servant of yours long, Mr. Thorndyke?" Mrs.
Greg asked one day. "He is a strange looking creature. Of course, in
the daytime, when one sees him about in ordinary clothes, one does not
notice him so much; but of an evening, in that Eastern costume of his,
he looks very strange."

"He was the servant of the Colonel, my brother," the Squire replied. "He
brought him over from India with him. The man had been some years in his
service, and was very attached to him, and had saved his life more than
once, he told me. On one occasion he caught a cobra by the neck as it
was about to strike my brother's hand as he sat at table; he carried it
out into the compound, as George called it, but which means, he told me,
garden, and there let it escape. Another time he caught a Thug, which
means a sort of robber who kills his victims by strangling before
robbing them. They are a sort of sect who regard strangling as a
religious action, greatly favored by the bloodthirsty goddess they
worship. He was in the act of fastening the twisted handkerchief, used
for the purpose, round my brother's neck, when Ramoo cut him down. The
closest shave, though, was when George, coming down the country, was
pounced upon by a tiger and carried off. Ramoo seized a couple of
muskets from the men, and rushed into the jungle after him, and coming
up with the brute killed him at the first shot. George escaped with a
broken arm and his back laid open by a scratch of the tiger's claws as
it first seized him.

"So at George's death I took Ramoo on, and have found him a most useful
fellow. Of course, I was some little time before I became accustomed
to his noiseless w