riously shaking the British power or reputation, might produce a recrudescence of the old disease, but in the mean time the dacoits have entirely changed their habits. Instead of living together in bands in the jung.e they are scattered through separate villages in the guise of peaceful cultivators. During the day each man attends to his paddy fields just like his neighbors, and it is only at night that they meet together for the despatch of their more important and lucrative business.

Dacoity as defined by law is simply robbery committed by a band of five men or more, and it is important only because of the Burman's strong natural propensity toward it, and the great difficulties which his national character places in the way of his detection. It must always be remembered that, Burmah being in a transition stage and much less settled than India, and the government being extremely shorthanded, an immense amount of various kinds of work falls upon each single English official. Hence it is wholly impossible for him to exercise any close or detailed supervision over any particular part of his district. This of itself renders the detection of criminals a difficult matter. When the dacoits were in the woods it was simply a case of turning out occasionally to hunt them down. At present the matter must necessarily be left chiefly in the hands of natives. Now, the natives are for the most part honest and tolerably law-abiding, and they have no sympathy whatever with a man who goes dacoiting; but the dacoit goes armed, and the supineness and cowardice of the Burman in the presence of arms, more particularly of firearms, are something almost incomprehensible to the Western mind. It is quite sufficient for a party of half-a-dozen men to have a gun among them and they may go fearlessly to work in the midst of a crowd. But perhaps the strange workings of the native character are best exhibited in the following case, which occurred quite recently. The facts are vouched for by an English officer. There was a band of five men who were in the habit of practising dacoity occasionally.

Three of them came from the same village-not a common thing, as it makes detection easier-the fourth from another village, and as for the fifth, no man knows whence he came, for reasons that will appear. One night these five men, armed with nothing but their knives and spears, which are used for fishing in Lower Burmah, entered a house, tied up the owner, and began plundering. Now, this house was in a large village, containing not only a population of some fourteen hundred but a police post with fifteen native policemen armed with Sniders. The alarm was given and the house surrounded and-then there was a pause. The robbers continued their work undisturbed within. The villagers-some two hundred or three hundred ablebodied men, all more or less armedsat around on the dam which surrounds and protects every house on the delta, looked down on the house, and discussed the question; the police stood rather nearer the house and fired shots into it through the bamboo walls, hurting no one.

One solitary policeman, after a time, volunteered to advance. He crept up quite close to the house, and fired in through an opening in the wall; then he went further and actually put his head and part of his body through the hole, apparently to see what execution he had done. One of the robbers promptly pinned him to the ground with a fish-spear, and killed him. By this time they had completed their preparations, so they sallied forth, each man with his pack of plunder on his back. Though the house was surrounded, they appear to have had no difficulty in making their way through, only the police fired after them with ouck-shot and hit three of them in the Lack, not seriously wounding them. But one of the band had the misfortune to stumble and fall. Instantly the crowd rushed upon him, and before he could rise literally hacked him to pieces, and so effectively that not the slightest clue to his identity remained. He was absolutely destroyed; no one knows even what was his nationality. The other four got clear away.

A PRAYER TO SPRING.

Thou at whose touch awake all sleeping things,

Whose breath unseals in woods the frozen springs,

And life imparts

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire

Run through and transpierce and transpire,

And a secret purpose of glory in every part,

To breaking hearts.

heart;

IN KEDAR'S TENTS.1 BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN, AUTHOR OF "THE

SOWERS."

CHAPTER III.

LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA.

"No one can be more wise than destiny."

"What are we waiting for? why, two more passengers, grand ladies, as they tell me, and the captain has gone ashore to fetch them," the first mate of the Granville barque of London made answer to Frederick Conyngham, and he breathed on his fingers as he spoke, for the north-west wind was blowing across the plains of the Medoc, and the sun had just set behind the smoke of Bordeaux.

The Granville was lying at anchor in the middle of the Garonne River, having safely discharged her deck cargo of empty claret casks and landed a certain number of passengers. There are few colder spots on the Continent than the sunny town of Bordeaux when the west wind blows from Atlantic wastes in winter time. A fine powder of snow scudded across the flat land, which presented a bleak, brown face patched here and there with white. There were two more passengers on board the Granville crouching in the cabin, French gentlemen who had taken passage from London to Algeciras, in Spain, on their way to Algiers.

two

"There's a boat leaving the quay now," he added. "Seems she's lumbered up forrard wi' women's hamper."

And, indeed, the black form of a skiff so laden could be seen approaching through the driving snow and gloom. The mate called to the steward to come on deck, and this bearded servitor of dames emerged from the gallery with up-rolled sleeves and a fine contempt for cold winds. A boy went forward with a coil of rope on his arm, for the tide was running hard, and the Garonne is no ladies' pleasure stream. It is no easy matter to board a ship in mid-current when tide and wind are at variance and the fingers so cold that a rope slips through them like a log-line. The Granville, having still on board her cargo of coal for Algeciras, lay low in the water, with both her anchors out, and the tide singing round her old-fashioned hempen hawsers.

"Now see ye throw a clear rope," shouted the mate to the boy, who had gone forward. The proximity of the land and the approach of women-a bête noire no less dreaded-seemed to

ville's mate.

Perhaps the knowledge that the end of a rope, not judged clear, would inevitably be applied to his own person, shook the nerve of the boy on the forecastle; perhaps his hands were cold and his faculties benumbed. He cast a line which seemed to promise well at first.

Two coils of it unfolded themselves

gradually against the grey sky, and

then confusion took the others for herself. A British oath from the deck of the ship went out to meet a fine French explosion of profanity from the boat. both forestalling the splash of the tangled rope into the water ten yards out

of the reach of the man who stood, boat-hook in hand, ready to catch it. There were two ladies in the stem of the boat muffled up to the eyes, and betokening by their attitude the hopeless despair and misery which seize the Southern fair the moment they embark in so much as a ferry-boat. The forepart of the heavy craft was piled up with trunks and other impedimenta of a feminine incongruity. A single boatman had rowed the boat from the shore, guiding it into mid-stream, and there describing a circle calculated to ensure a gentle approach on the lee side. This man, having laid aside his oars, now stood, boat-hook in hand, awaiting the inevitable crash. The offending boy in the bows was making frantic efforts to haul in his misguided rope, but the possibility of making a second cast was unworthy of consideration. The mate muttered such a string of foreboding expletives as augured ill for the delinquent. The boatman was preparing to hold on and fend off at the same moment. A sudden gust of wind gave the boat a sharp buffet, just as the man grappled the mizzen-chains; he overbalanced himself, fell and recovered himself, but only to be jerked backward into the water by the boat-hook, which struck him in the chest.

"A moi!" cried the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to the surface under the ship's quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the attitude of a monkey. At the same instant a splash made the rescuers turn in time to see Conyngham, whose coat lay thrown on the deck behind them, rise to the surface ten yards astern of the Granville, and strike out toward the boat now almost disappearing in the gloom of the night.

The water, which had flowed through the sunniest of the sunny plains of France, was surprisingly warm, and Conyngham, soon recovering from the

shock of his dive, settled into a quick side-stroke. The boat was close in front of him, and in the semi-darkness he could see one of the women rise from her seat and make her way forward, while her companion crouched lower and gave voice to her dismay in a series of wails and groans. The more intrepid lady was engaged in lifting one of the heavy oars, when Conyngham called out in French:—

"Courage, mesdames! I will be with you in a moment."

Both turned, and the pallor of their faces shone whitely through the gloom. Neither spoke, and in a few strokes Conyngham came alongside. He clutched the gunwale with his right hand and drew himself breast-high.

"If these ladies," he said, "will kindly go to the opposite side of the boat, I shall be able to climb in without danger of upsetting."

"If mamma inclines that way, I think it will be sufficient," answered the muffled form, which had made its way forward. The voice was clear and low, remarkably self-possessed, and not without a suggestion that its possessor bore a grudge against some person present.

"Perhaps mademoiselle is right," said Conyngham with becoming gravity, and the lady in the stern obeyed her daughter's suggestion with the result anticipated. Indeed, the boat heeled over with so much good will, that Conyngham was lifted right out of the water. He clambered on board, and immediately began shivering, for the wind cut like a knife.

The younger lady made her way cautiously back to the seat which she had recently quitted, and began at once to speak very severely to her mother. This stout and emotional person was swaying backward and forward, and. in the intervals of wailing and groaning called in Spanish upon several selected saints to assist her. At times, and apparently by way of a change, she appealed to yet higher powers to receive her soul.

"My mother," said the young lady to Conyngham, who had already got