264 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the East, and ranged over many fields of politics, 

 philosophy, and literature. I cannot recall these 

 nights at Srinagar without mingled sadness and 

 pleasure. It never struck me then that we were in a 

 house at all ; but rather as if we were by a camp-fire. 

 My host had a way of reclining before the fire on the 

 floor ; the flames of the wood shot up brilliantly ; 

 brown Abdiel in his sheepskin coat suggested the 

 Indian Caucasus ; and instead of the gaudily-painted 

 woodwork of the Residency, I felt around us only 

 the circle of snowy mountains, and above, the shining 

 hosts of heaven. And to both of us this was a camp- 

 fire, and an unexpected happy meeting in the wilder- 

 ness of life. A few months afterwards, Mr "Wynne, 

 after a short run to Europe on privilege leave, re- 

 turned to Calcutta, in order to take up the office of 

 Foreign Secretary during the absence of Mr Aitchi- 

 son, and died almost immediately after. He had not 

 been many years in the Indian Civil Service, and the 

 highest hopes were entertained of his future career. 

 I had felt, however, instinctively that so fine an 

 organisation, both mental and physical, must either 

 " die or be degraded " ; and perhaps it was with some 

 subtle, barely conscious precognition of his early doom 

 that Wynne rose and made a note of the lines which I 

 quoted to him one night when we were speaking of the 

 early death of another young Indian civilian 



" But the fair guerdon when we hope v to find, 

 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 



