Tidings of the event are carried to the
nearest factory, and then to another and another. Two or three of his
former acquaintances ride over to his bungalow, knock up a rude
coffin, mumble a few sentences about "the resurrection and the life,"
"our dear brother here departed," and "ashes to ashes, dust to dust,"
bury him out of sight, and set up a decent stone over his grave. His
place is filled again in a few weeks or months, and his successor,
regardless of warnings, toils on in the old routine, possibly to share
his miserable fate.
As I have said above, a guard was directed to await me on the Oude
borders. Various, conflicting, and all of them wide of the mark, were
my speculations on its outward and visible form, and the martial
equipment by which it was to strike terror in all beholders. Was it to
consist of horse or of foot? and of how many men? and so forth. The
mystery was resolved at the time and place appointed. A camel--a
picked sample, seemingly, for general ugliness and the vicious way it
writhed its mouth--shambled up to my tent. Its rider, who in all
specialties of repulsiveness tallied with the beast to a hair, impaled
a letter on the tip of his spear and handed it down. It was from the
Resident at Lucknow. In its unpromising bearer I beheld my guard. If
the look of a thorough ruffian, much unwashed, with the spear just
mentioned, a matchlock, and an assortment round his waist of what
resembled carving-knives and skewers, was to be my sufficient defence
in time of trouble, I was well provided for.
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