24 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
The deserter, notwithstanding the numerous impe- 
diments against which he had to contend, resolutely 
pursued his journey through the night, and towards 
morning approached a small hamlet nearly in the 
centre of an extensive plain. Upon reaching it, he 
found the houses in a state of miserable dilapidation, 
and completely deserted. Famine had depopulated 
this perhaps once flourishing and populous village. 
The melancholy silence which prevailed as he passed 
through the street, now overgrown with rank wiry 
grass, brought to his mind the painful consciousness 
of desolation and of death. Ere he gained the ex- 
tremity of the one long avenue, flanked with the ruins 
of deserted habitations on either side, he was greeted 
with the loud abrupt bark of a Pariah dog. The 
creature was gaunt and lean as a half- famished wolf. 
Its head and back were scaled with mange, and it 
looked altogether a monstrous and disgusting incar- 
nation of misery. 
As the sergeant advanced, the animal turned and 
slunk into a ruined building, the entrance to which 
was greatly dilapidated. He followed into the murky 
ruin. Upon the floor sat a small meagre figure, appa- 
rently in a sort of rapt abstraction. By his side was 
a pitcher of water, and a platter on which was some 
cold boiled rice dotted with green chilis. He was a 
perfect living skeleton : every muscle and fibre, — in 
short, the whole superficial mechanism of the macerat- 
ed machine was as apparent to the eye as if it had 
been laid bare by the dissecting knife and scalpel of 
the anatomist. His features seemed to have shrunk 
from the skin, which was puckered over them in a 
