the administration of the country, and takes precious good care nowadays that the Sultan doesn't oppress his subjects, so the personality of the ruler-the nominal ruler-does not signify much. On the other hand, the Sultan is the recognised mouthpiece of the native population. His position is secure; he stands to lose nothing by any concessions that the Government may be led to make to his subjects; and since he is by birth, by training, and by instinct a Malay of the Malays, he is in close sympathy with the natives, knows what they want, why they want it, what will happen if they get it, and has no motive to conceal his knowledge. But put Saleh in the same position. We have made a sort of Englishman of him, taught him to see things exclusively from our point of view, have estranged his sympathies from his own people, have blunted his understanding of their character and needs. They will spot the change in him quick enough,—trust them for that,-and the springs of their confidence will be dried up at the source. Far from making him a more useful instrument for the government of his people, the training we have given him will spoil him for the very work he could have done most efficiently." "If you are right," said Mr Le Mesurier sadly, "this is a very miserable business. I confess that the matter has not appealed to me in this way before. I am beginning to wish that I had never had a hand in it." "I would give worlds to believe that I was mistaken," said Jack, no less sadly; "but I know, I know. To sacrifice the happiness of the individual for the happiness of the majority is sound, no doubt. A heroic policy, perhaps, but utilitarian and just. I haven't a word to say against it. But in this case, it seems to me, the cause of the greater number has not been served, and the hapless individual has been delivered up a whole burnt-offering,-has been plunged into the fires of the Terrible Place, as he said himself, poor little fellow!" "And what do you think is to be the end of it all?" asked Mrs Le Mesurier drearily. Neither she nor her husband seemed able longer to contend against Jack's merciless logic, backed as it was by such deep, sure knowledge. "Heaven knows!" he answered. "You see he has found out that he isn't and can never be the Englishman he had thought himself-that, in a word, everything for which he has been striving is unattainable. A reaction of some sort is inevitable in the face of this paralysing discovery. For the moment, as far as I can make out, he is in desperate pain; but his strongest feeling is humiliation, disgust of himself because of his limitations physical and moral. That is bad, but in a way it is healthy too. If he sticks to that he will suffer, but it won't do him much harm." "Then what do you fear?" asked Mrs Le Mesurier anxiously. "All sorts of things. I fear that he may get to see, as I do, the shocking injustice of the folly of which he has been the victim. If that happens, it will embitter him terribly. If he ever asks himself why he was given false hopes, taught to cherish ideals that of their very nature were far beyond his reach,-why he was led on and on with fair promises to the brink of the discovery that he could be an Englishman only minus an Englishman's happiness and privileges, that he has been robbed, too, of the power to appreciate the lower, grosser life to which he was born,-then, I am afraid, it may play the very devil with him-I beg your pardon, Mrs Le Mesurier-I mean it may be very bad for him indeed." 'His is a very sweet nature," said Mrs Le Mesurier hopefully. "I can hardly imagine him becoming soured. Besides, I don't think you allow enough for the amount of principle he has." "Don't you think that the principles may go by the board when he sees what misery the whole system, of which they form a part, has entailed upon him? I do. Remember they have no root in religious conviction." "Oh, I hope not, I hope not," cried Mrs Le Mesurier earnestly. "Yet if he escapes the bitterness, if his love be not turned to hate, his only chance of happiness is to forget," said Jack musingly, his eyes fixed with a far-away gaze upon the empty grate, his chin propped upon his hand. "The East is a wonderful place. It weaves its own spells-spells whose magic even a white man can feel. Perhaps it will take back its own. Perhaps when he returns to Pělěsu the East will open its arms and draw him close to its tattered, gorgeous breast. Maybe the sun-glare on the wildernesses of hot damp forest, the heavy air moving lazily through the sleepy land, the great rivers lumbering seaward, the utter quiet and calm and melancholy of it all, will lull him to a sort of peace. After a storm there cometh a great calm'; you know what wise old Thomas à Kempis says? Perhaps the East will be for him the Land of Cockagne, and in the voluptuous folds of it, drugged by the beauty of it, loving even the sickly sweet smells of it, he will sink down, down, down from the height to which you have raised him, |