Alexandria:

"The Leander has just steamed in, crowded with snobs, civil
and military, but no Loyd. The fellow must have given up his
appointment or gone 'long sea.' In any case, he has escaped
me. I am frantic. A whole month's plottings of vengeance
scattered to the winds and lost! I'd return to England,
if I were only certain to meet with him: but a Faquir, whom
I have just consulted, says, 'Go east, and the worst will
come of it!' and so I start in two hours for Suez. There
are two here who know me, but I mean to caution them how
they show it; they are old enough to take a hint.

"Yours, H. C.

"I hear my old regiment has mutinied, and sabred eight of
the officers. I wish they'd have waited a little longer, and
neither S. nor W. would have got off so easily. From all I
can learn, and from the infernal fright the fellows who are
going back exhibit, I suspect that the work goes bravely
on."

CHAPTER XVIII. TIDINGS FROM BENGAL.

I am not about to chronicle how time now rolled over the characters of
our story. As for the life of those at the villa, nothing could be less
eventful All existences that have any claim to be called happy are of
this type, and if there be nothing brilliant or triumphant in their
joys, neither is there much poignancy in their sorrows.

Loyd wrote almost by every mail, and with a tameness that shadowed forth
the uniform tenor of his own life. It was pretty nigh the same story,
garnished by the same reflections. He had been named a district judge
"up country," and passed his days deciding the disputed claims of indigo
planters against the ryots, and the ryots against the planters. Craft,
subtlety, and a dash of perjury, ran through all these suits, and
rendered them rather puzzles for a quick intelligence to resolve,
than questions of right or legality. He told, too, how dreary and
uncompanionable his life was; how unsolaced by friendship, or even
companionship; that the climate was enervating, the scenery monotonous,
and the thermometer at a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty
degrees.

Yet Loyd could speak with some encouragement about his prospects. He was
receiving eight hundred rupees a month, and hoped to be promoted to some
place, ending in Ghar or Bad, with an advance of two hundred more. He
darkly hinted that the mutinous spirit of certain regiments was said to
be extending, but