OU are always asking for more stories, children why should I not write out for you some recollections of my own early life, which, though not very eventful, was yet very unlike your bright and happy childhood? If I amuse you, well and good. If I weary you, I will burn the manuscript, and there will be no harm done.

The first scene that I can recollect with any distinctness, as I look back through the long vista of past years, occurred when I must have been about seven years old. My home was then in Colaba, a long narrow islet, joined to the island of Bombay by a causeway at

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its northern point, and having at its southern end a tall lighthouse. A road ran through the centre of the islet, with houses scattered on either side; and ours was a rambling, half-ruinous dwelling, very near the lighthouse. Outside, it was not unlike an English barn, with the addition of a deep verandah on three of its sides, thatched with palm-leaves, and supported by rude posts. The rooms on the ground-floor were disused, though a passage through the centre of the house led to a little cooking-shed at the back. The staircase was uneven and pierced with many a rat-hole, but the upper rooms were in tolerable repair and of good size, and the projection of the high-pitched roof, which was thatched like the verandah, shaded the windows from the blaze of the sun. There were two sitting-rooms, my mother's bedroom, my father's dressing-closet, and Mrs. Armstrong's room, where I slept in a little bed in the corner. Our only two native servants spread their mats at night in the verandah, as I well knew; for old Ali had a trick of muttering in his sleep, and startled me many a time as I lay in bed. In the rains, they were content to stretch themselves on the floor of one of those dreary, dusty chambers below.

As to the house-work, Mrs. Armstrong would not allow any body but herself to do it. She was a widow, who had known better days; a bustling wo

man, whom even tropical heat could not render languid; and she was half servant, half companion to my poor sickly mother, making herself useful in return for her board, for I don't think she received any salary. My mother was always ill, and my father went every morning into the Fort to his business, which kept him away all day, so I hardly know what would have become of us without Mrs. Armstrong, though her busy ways and strict notions often fretted a spoilt child such as I was then. It was my father who spoiled me. In the early morning I went out with him on the rocks below the lighthouse; we breakfasted together, he listening the while to my childish prattle, and defending me from the lectures of Mrs. Armstrong, who came in and out to fetch my mother's tea. Almost every day I could have cried, as I watched him carried away in a hired palkee towards the Fort; and my greatest daily joy was to see him return in the evening. I sat beside him at dinner, and shared his meal, in spite of Mrs. Armstrong's opposition; and in the cool of the evening we strolled out together on the rocks, or as far as the great landing-place, or on the grassy esplanade. As far back as I can remember, my poor mother was always ill, and Mrs. Armstrong kept me out of the way, lest I should disturb her; so I had to find my own amusements all the day. I had no toys,

except a few leaden figures that our younger servant had moulded for me, and a waxen baby which my father had brought me one happy day, and which, in spite of its jaundiced complexion, I believed to be a model of beauty. Now and then I was allowed to creep on tiptoe to my mother's bedside and kiss her poor pale face, or exchange a few whispered words with her; but most part of the day I passed alone.

Such was the state of things at the time which I recollect with some degree of clearness; and the events of one night especially come back to me, as if they had occurred but yesterday. My mother was worse than usual, and Mrs. Armstrong, after undressing me and putting me into my little bed, with the mosquito-net carefully tucked in all round it, returned to my mother's room to sit up all night. My father was writing in the sitting-room. He had been grave and silent all the evening, and I had heard him say he should not go to bed. The house was very still, and as I lay awake, I heard my father at long intervals creep to the sick-room, and then return to his task. I could not sleep: I grew more and more restless and nervous, till at last I sat up in the bed and looked about me. There was a dim light from a tumbler within which a wick floated in cocoa-nut oil, in a distant corner of the large room. The sea-breeze stealing in through the

closed jalousies, shook the white drapery above Mrs. Armstrong's bed, till I almost fancied some living thing was there. I looked up to the great beams of the roof, and round on the rude plastered walls, and down on the matted floor. Now and then bats flitted in and out, silent and rapid as thought; and here and there a musk-rat would creep out of his hole, and glide along close to the wainscot. These were sights to which I was well accustomed, but on this night I was strangely nervous. I watched one, two, three, four rats stealing about the room, and I thought of a story my father had been telling me: how the lower part of the house belonged to Bandicoot, the Rat-King, who wore a gold crown, and held his court in a room on the ground-floor; and how every rat in the house (and there were myriads) was obliged to appear nightly before the king and make his salaam.

The story had amused me very much as I sat on my father's knee after dinner, and I had clapped my hands at every fresh rat that appeared, and shouted, "There's another of King Bandicoot's men, papa!" But I did not like it so well now in my loneliness, and the thought of King Bandicoot filled me with foolish terror. Now and then, too, I heard old Ali muttering in his sleep in the verandah below my windows, and this was a sound that always alarmed me; so that it needed only