corn blown by a capricious breeze as each one sought his place. Gradually the rustling ceased. It subsided and all was still. It grew so still that one could feel the silence. That extraordinary feeling that we of the West seldom experience, but that many a native race, living akin to nature, knows full well—that sixth sense fraught with mystery—seemed suddenly to awake and hold us tense with expectation. Something was coming—something unexpected, something that would move us strangely. Silently we sat waiting, our nerves strung painfully. Then the whisper passed. They were coming. Not the Viceroy, not the brother of the King-Emperor, not the splendour and glory of the East, nor the might of the West in the heyday of its pride. They were coming! One heard the strains of music that accompanied them before they came in sight. 'See the Conquering Hero Comes.' Why was it that one's pulses leapt within one and one's eyes drew dim? And then they came, straggling, in no attempted order, some in uniform and some in mufti, they came, just a band of feeble toil-worn men, old and bent and weary, disabled, crippled, maimed, but, above all, triumphant, the Heroes of England's day of need—of England's day of victory—the veterans of the Mutiny. At their head marched the band of the Munster Fusileers, the old ioist Foot, which had fought so gallantly at their side. It was the same regiment, with the same traditions, but it was a new and younger generation of men who played the heroes in to-day, and their strength and vigour contrasted strangely
