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 XI.

THE JOURNALIST: A TALE OF WOE.

December 30.

I MET him at high noon in the Chandni Chauk. There was a block of traffic. Around him were ramshackle ekkas, rough bullock carts, carriages loaded with the gaudy retainers of native chiefs, stray tongas, casual police sowars. Just behind his victoria stood a lumbering coach drawn by a couple of camels. The heads of the camels were protruded over his own ; but he heeded them not. He wore a frock-coat that once had been black, but was now thick with dust. There was a perceptible layer of dust over the cushions whereon he sat ; dust hung on his very eyebrows, and yellowed his brown moustache. He looked the picture of resignation. The old impatient intolerance of delay, that I had known in other climates, had been wiped out of him. He had grown passive in adversity. The spirit of the country brooded over him. The East had claimed him for its own.

A faint gleam of recognition lit his eye as I shouldered my way towards him. He uttered no word of greeting ; yet I saw he wanted to speak. In a dull, even voice, from which all trace of