It

small justification for inflicting on him a death of lingering agony, The beast was wont to kill with swift scientific certainty, no botcher at earning his livelihood. And in one moment, for the only crime of carrying out a natural instinct, he had been reduced to a condition of pierced and crippled helplessness by a foe that dared not meet him on the level and in the open. seemed a dastardly business, and one to be completed with all possible expedition. Was the beast yet living, or had a merciful death come upon him in the scented night or at gray morningtime? He breathed a silent prayer that the wound might have proved fatal long ago. Then, in startling vividness, there flashed on his inner eye the vision of the vaulted bamboo grove, and an anguish-stricken panther tearing with protruded claws the yellow carpet of matted cane-leaves. He turned suddenly to one of the Gonds trudging in his rear: "Are there any bamboos in the Government jungle?" he asked.

The reply was that only one grove remained, rescued by the Sirkar when the forest had been declared reserved from wasteful destruction at the hands

of neighboring villagers. The canes, added the speaker, were very old and thicker than ordinary.

Upon this, the orderly, a vulture-featured Mussulman with thin henna-dyed beard, launched into reminiscences of panthers and Sahibs whom he had known and hunted with in his own hot youth,-of Burton Sahib, who was wont to catch panthers in a huge mouse-trap, and, having turned them loose on the parade-ground, to ride them down with a hog-spear alone; of Thomson Sahib who crawled into a lime-kiln after a man-eater and there concluded the business at close quarters with a revolver-bullet between the eyes; and many other great shikaris had he, Karim Bux, served, but the greatest of

all had been i-Smith Sahib who had over a hundred panthers to his name and, thrice mauled, showed a helpless fore-arm as evidence of an encounter that had nearly proved fatal.

But the Assistant Commissioner, more than ever lost in his own thoughts, scarcely listened to this narration of legendary exploits of by-gone heroes. Walking as one in a dream, he felt each step bearing him nearer to some undefined disaster, some danger which he strove in vain to grapple with in imagination. Yet, as he repeatedly assured himself, the position in which he found himself the chief actor was commonplace, even hackneyed. Scores of white men in India yearly went through the same performance. Granted that some life still remained in the beast, he would probably charge and be shot down at close range; of the two bullets, one would surely fly straight enough to stop a rush. Should the worst happen and both barrels miss, at his back would be the old orderly with the shot-gun loaded with slugs, and there was also the man with the crimson-tasselled spear. The situation could hardly hold other events in store for him; what danger there was was purely material, and he strove to discount it by calm anticipation. was not afraid, but he was terribly afraid of being afraid. In spite of all his efforts the sense of impending catastrophe growing upon him numbed his brain into an unreasoning apprehension of ill.

He

The party had now reached the scene of the last evening's vigil; where the wounded panther had entered the jungle a dull brown smear on the side of a teak-sapling marked his passage. Here the four Gonds were bidden to halt on the fire-line until summoned. Attended by the orderly and the Ratia, the Assistant Commissioner set about following up the trail. In this there was little difficulty, for blood-stains lay

thick upon the withered leaves; but the three moved with caution. Open though the jungle was at its fringe, the red sandstone boulders cropped plentifully through the thin soil, providing ample cover for a wounded beast of prey. Gradually, as the undergrowth grew denser, the progress of the trackers slackened. At a momentary break in the trail the old orderly broke the silence in an agitated whisper. "Sahib," he murmured, "this is an evil place. Let the Presence be guided by my advice and send for buffaloes that they may beat the jungle hereabouts, for thus would i-Smith Sahib and Thomson Sahib drive out many a wounded panther from even such a jungle as this." The Ratia laughed. "There are scarce a score of buffaloes," he said, "in ten villages round, and to collect them would take us till evening. Why should we take all this trouble for a mangy panther when we have two guns and a spear?"

The Assistant Commissioner straightened his back and gazed keenly into the jungle to his front. Over the tops of the young teaks he saw a single shoot of bamboo drooping gracefully, with light green foliage a-shimmer in the sunlight. The spot was not twenty paces from where he stood.

Then for the first time in his life he began to be horribly afraid. He had read of fear in books and talked of it in jest, and as he recognized its symptoms in himself (the cold, rough skin and the strange weakness at the back of his knees) he was filled with passionate self-loathing. Under pretence of searching for the trail he bent double lest his cowardice might show itself in his face. He knew well where the beast would be found, trail or no trail. His feet, heavy as lead, took him with torturing slowness towards the bamboos. His brain was a surging sea of conflicting feelings. "Send for the buffaloes," clamored his baser self with

stunning persistency. "Remember that a man has not a ghost of a chance against a wounded panther in thick jungle. And what glory is there in being mauled? Send for the buffaloes." But from the more inward depths of consciousness rose other clearer voices, the protests of his training and education, and, more than all, of his pride of race. "If you shirk walking the beast up yourself," said these voices, "you stand self-condemned. You elected to play a dangerous game, with the odds at first enormously in your favor. Now that the game bids fair to go against you, you would back out of it like an undisciplined child, or seek to restore the former odds by unfair means. It is the risk that makes the game worth playing; without it, it is butchery. And will you, a white man in authority, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, turn from an encounter which the half-clad, undersized native at your back is ready, armed only with a spear, to face? You would have few to witness your disgrace but,-you I could never shoot in these jungles again. You had the Ratia flogged yesterday; could you have taken the punishment in silence and harbored no resentment against its author? Will you now show yourself the inferior of such a man? You cannot, you dare not! You must face the music!"

The old orderly was by now lagging considerably in the rear. Stooping and peering in the dark green shade, the Englishman followed closely by the Ratia advanced step by step into the bamboo grove. In the mind of the former an immense impatience began to obscure all powers of thought and reason. There was now no question of retreat; but, so that the end came quickly, he had almost ceased to care in whose favor the affair might terminate. There was blood on the ground at his feet,-fresh red blood.-and a little further on there was quite a pool

of the same horrible color. The end must be very near now.

"Sahib, Sahib," pleaded a low voice at his elbow, "look to the right."

The Assistant Commissioner looked, and for an instant his heart stopped beating. Scarce three paces from his feet crouched and swayed a dying panther, gathering with a tremendous effort all his remaining forces for a final spring. Blood dropped from the half open mouth and quivering lower jaw, and the white teeth were smeared with crimson. In the beast's eyes there burned such an awful glare of hate and mortal agony that as the Englishman threw the rifle to his shoulder he turned his head away, faint and sick. As the report rang out, the beast in silence leaped full at the man's chest. The latter, dashed with fearful violence to the ground, his rifle hurled far from his hand, lay still beneath him. Then one ran up swiftly from behind and thrust the beast off the body with a tasselled spear, pinning the feebly writhing creature to the earth until its struggles ceased. "The Sahib," said the orderly after Macmillan's Magazine.

a close examination of the yet unconscious man, "must have struck his head against this root and thus he has lost his senses. He has also a shallow bite on his shoulder."

The little Gonds made two litters out of canes and creepers and carried home the slayer and the slain. For two days the Assistant Commissioner lay in a high fever; on the morning of the third he saw the world once more with discerning eyes. The flies of the tent were fastened back, for it was a hot morning. At the door sat his bearer, fast asleep, and a black and white kid roamed restlessly over the matting by the bed. Without, under the mango tree, two natives were engaged in rubbing a pegged-out panther skin, singing monotonously the while.

The bearer woke with a start and brought his master quinine. He salaamed profoundly. "Next time," he said, "the Presence will send for buffaloes."

"Ah," said the Assistant Commissioner faintly. But next time he did not!

C. P.

won him the Duke's acquaintance. The Duke owned "The Subaltern" "true enough," and said to Croker of its author, "He is a clever, observing man, and I shall enquire about him." And inquire he did, with the result that he accepted the dedication of a second edition, and that henceforth Gleig was received at Walmer, Strathfieldsaye, and Apsley House with intimacy and confidence.

G. R. Gleig, Chaplain-General; author of "The Subaltern," &c. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1904.

But more than opportunity was given to Gleig. He cherished for his hero a deep and lasting sympathy, which afforded him an insight into the Duke's character denied to many of his intimates. Moreover, he approached his friend and patron with the same air of humility which Boswell always preserved in the presence of Dr. Johnson. He continually refers to him as "this great man," and though his candor detected some spots upon the sun of his adoration, he was less inclined to exaggerate them than to explain them away. His "Personal Reminiscences" of the Duke, therefore bear the stamp of authenticity, and, though many others since Gleig have printed their confidences, there is much that is fresh, and nothing that is false, in this posthumous work.

Not long after Gleig's first meeting with the Duke, the loud cry for the reform of the House of Commons was heard in the land, and throughout the political crisis which preceded the famous Bill of 1832 Gleig was a staunch supporter of the Tory party. In these years of stress and storm he aided the Duke both with counsel and with pen, and his account of the Duke's opinions and policy is of the greatest value. No statesman opposed the encroaching democracy with greater vigor and a higher sense of duty than Wellington. The Duke had a sincere and well-grounded distrust of the people. In his eyes it was not reform that was contemplated -it was revolution. "It was a revolution in itself," he said to Gleig, "which ought to have been crushed in the bud, and I suggested to Peel the propriety of moving that leave be refused to introduce the Bill. But Peel always had his own views about what was due to the House of Commons, and my advice was not acted upon. And now you see what a mess we are in!" He saw ruin in the present, and no hope for the future. England, the sole peaceful

corner of Europe, would, he was convinced, become an anarchical bear-garden.

"The Bill once passed," said Croker, "good-night to the Monarchy, and the Lords, and the Church," and the Duke shared Croker's despondency. Moreover, although (perhaps because) he had given way on the Catholic Relief Bill, Wellington was determined not to yield an inch on the question of Reform; and he only withdrew his opposition at the last, in order to save the House of Lords from what he believed an indignity. He was perfectly satisfied with things as they were, and saw nothing but good in rotten boroughs and unenfranchised towns. "I do not mean to assert that I would form such a legislature as you now possess," he had said, replying to Lord Grey in 1830, "for the nature of man is incapable of reaching such excellence at once; but my great endeavor would be to form some description of legislature which would produce the same results." However, in this crisis he found no more zealous supporter than Gleig, who did his utmost to acquire newspapers and to influence the press, and who was rewarded by a frank exposition of his leader's views. The most of men, even of Tories, at that time were content either to excuse the existing anomaly or to plead the inviolability of the constitution. But Wellington was eloquent in applauding the weakest points of our electoral system. "I confess," he wrote to Gleig in April 1831, "that I see in thirty members for Rotten Boroughs thirty men, I don't care of which party, who would preserve the state of property as it is, who would maintain by their votes the Church of England, its possessions, its churches and universities, all our great institutions and corporations, the Union with Scotland and Ireland, the union of the country with its foreign colonies and possessions, the national honor

abroad, and its good faith with all the King's subjects at home."

"I

The Duke's stern consistency aroused England to a storm of fury at a hapless moment. To the desolation of cholera was added the disgrace of a general riot, and upon none did the mob wreak its anger so fiercely as upon the victor of Waterloo, the hero who had saved Europe. Wherever he went, the Duke was received with hisses and brickbats. Returning on one оссаsion from the City, he might have lost his life had not the gates of Lincoln's Inn been closed behind him. An assault was made upon Apsley House, and the rioters were only stayed in their work of destruction by being told that the Duchess lay dead within. Through all the disturbances the Duke remained cold and unmoved; he went about his business as though he had not lost a jot of his popularity; and he announces to Gleig his departure for Walmer with a pleasant defiance. suspect that those who will attack me on the road," said he, "will come rather the worst out of the contest, if there should be one." But Gleig was not easy in his mind, and at the mere suspicion of danger all his martial ardor revived. He, therefore, "communicated with a few gentlemen on whom he could rely," and provided the Duke with a body-guard on his progress from Sandwich to Walmer. They were six in number, armed with pistols and hunting-whips. Gleig rode forward to meet the Duke, leaving his companions in Sandwich, and "found him in his open calèche, provided with a brace of double-barrelled pistols, and having his servant likewise armed seated on the box." But happily no mob appeared, and for that day at any rate the Duke arrived safely within his castle walls without danger or in

sult.

However, the Bill was passed, and the results anticipated by the Tories

did not follow. of Reform, the Monarchy, the Church, and the House of Lords, which the Duke believed threatened, are still with us. But this episode, which Mr. Gleig sets forth at length, need not involve the Duke in a charge of reckless prophesying. The truth is that the Bill of 1832 disappointed both parties, the Whigs to their hurt, the Tories to their profit. The Whigs, who fondly believed that they would be governors of England for life, soon saw themselves displaced; while the Tories found to their surprise that the free electors did not make a much worse choice than the patrons of the Rotten Boroughs. At a moment of political crisis, even the wisest statesman is apt to believe that the country is in danger. But it is the habit of England to cheat reform of its logical conclusion, and though we live under the form of a democracy, our government is still oligarchic in essence and temper. After all, the people clamors loudest for what it has not got, and having in the winter of 1831-2 burnt towns and sacked houses, it chose to be represented by many of the same men against whom its fury had been so savagely expressed. Unfortunately, the Duke of Wellington did not live to see the full irony of Whiggism. It has been reserved for our own time, and for one of our own colonies, to demonstrate the futility of Universal Suffrage. There is to-day no Australian SO poor but he may enjoy the privilege of a vote; yet, taking no pride in the rights of citizenship, for which his fathers fought and bled, the Australian obstinately declines to vote, and to complete the circle of absurdity, the Victorian Cabinet has resolved to make voting compulsory. It hopes to attain this end by disfranchisement. In other words, he who will not vote to-day, may not vote to-morrow, even if he would. Here we have the materials of a real comedy, and if Wellington is

After seventy years