Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/36

 Stunned and bewildered as I was, I yet remembered that it was necessary that the planter should know of Laura's death. I had taken from her hand the two rings which she always wore, and one of these, her wedding-ring, I enclosed in my letter to him. I gave this to the muccadum, with instructions to return at once to the place from which we had started three days before, and to deliver it into the Sahib's own hand.

In a fortnight's time I was in Calcutta, having made arrangements to leave for England by the next mail-steamer; and on the morning of my departure I was surprised to see the man to whom I had entrusted the letter containing the ring. He took from the inner folds of his upper garment a small parcel wrapped in paper, and gave into my hand my own letter, the envelope unopened, but much soiled, and closely covered with the lines of a strange handwriting in which I read that the planter had died of cholera within twenty-four hours of our departure.