ce been got up for their special behoof, as not an individual was to
be seen in the neighborhood. A morass of the district that had been
converted into a rice plantation, promised an abundant crop; and the
cotton plants, that Frank had once mistaken for flakes of snow, reared
their woolly blossoms, looking for all the world like the powdered
heads of our ancestors. After a slight repast, the pinnace was once
more in motion, and the party steering for Prospect Hill.

"Ah," sighed Willis, "I wish we had only Sir Marmaduke Travers' cage
here."

"Cage!" cried Fritz, laughing, "what, to shut up the game first and
shoot it afterwards?" "No, quite the reverse: to shut up the hunters."

"Ah, you would serve us in the same way as Louis XI. served Cardinal
Balue."

"I know nothing of either Louis XI. or Cardinal Balue; but the cage I
speak of was an excellent invention, for all that."

"Which you would like to prove to us by caging ourselves, eh?"

"Sir Marmaduke Travers," continued Willis, "was an English gentleman,
and he was travelling in Coromandel, no one knew why or for what
purpose."

"For the fun of the thing, probably," suggested Jack; the English are
said to be great oddities."

"At that time there happened to be a Hindoo widow somewhere in those
parts. This lady was very rich, very young, very beautiful, and very
fond of tormenting her admirers. And, as fate would have it, the
travelling Englishman was completely taken captive by this dark
beauty; and taking advantage of the hold she had obtained upon his
heart, she amused herself by making him do all sorts of out of the way
things. Sometimes she would bid him let his moustache grow, then she
would order him to cut it off; he had to worship Brahma, adopt the
fashion of the Hindoos, and had even to undergo the indignity of
having his head tied up in a dirty pocket-handkerchief."

"That is to say," remarked Jack, "that the lady, not having a pug or a
monkey, made Sir Marmaduke a substitute for both."

"Very likely, but still Sir Marmaduke was no fool; he was, on the
contrary, a gentleman and a philosopher."

"I doubt that," said Jack.

"You are wrong, then. You have been brought up in an out of the way
part of the world, and are not familiar with the usages of civilized
society. When once a man has allowed the tender passion to take root
in his breast, it cannot afterwards be extinguished at will; it grows
and grows like an oil spot, so that what might eas