steps, I could not but think that here was a wilderness indeed--a wilderness of treacherous snow and icebound rivers, peaked and piled up tumultuously like frozen waves against the darkening sky. The memory of Taylor's warning not to be late made me try what seemed a shorter and easier path than the one by which I had come; but ere long the usual difficulties of short cuts cropped up, and I had eventually to limp back to the slope with a badly cut ankle, which bled profusely despite my rough efforts at bandaging. The loss of blood was sufficient to make me feel quite sick and faint, so that it startled me to come suddenly on Taylor sooner than I expected. He was half kneeling, half sitting on the snow; his coat was off, and his face bent over something propped against his arm.

"'It's that boy,' he said shortly, as I came up. 'I found him just after you left, lying here--to rest, he says. It seems he has been making his way to the Cave ever since that day, without bite or sup, by the hills,--God knows how,--to avoid being turned back by the others. And now he is dying, and there's an end of it.'

"'The boy--not Amra!' I cried, bending in my turn.

"Sure enough, on Taylor's arm, with Taylor's coat over his wasted body, lay the young disciple. His great, luminous eyes looked out of a face whence even death could not drive the beauty, and his breath came in laboured gasps.

"'Brandy! I have some here,' I suggested in hot haste, moved to the idiotic suggestion by that horror of standing helpless which besets us all in presence of the Destroyer.

"Taylor looked at the boy with a grave smile and shook his head. 'To begin with, he wouldn't touch it; besides, he is past all that sort of thing. No one could help him now.' He paused, shifting the weight a little on his arm.

"'The Presence will grow tired holding me,' gasped the young voice feebly. 'If the sahib will put a stone under my head and cover me with some snow, I will be able to crawl on by and by when I am rested. For it is close--quite close.'

"'Very close,' muttered the doctor under his breath. Suddenly he looked up at me, saying in a half-apologetic way, 'I was wondering if you and I couldn't get him up there--to Amar-nâth I mean. Life has been hard on him; he deserves an easy death.'

"'Of course we can,' I cried in a rush of content at the suggestion, as I hobbled round to get to the other side, and so help the lad to his legs.

"'Hollo,' asked Taylor, with a quick professional glance, 'what have you done to your ankle? Sit down and let me overhaul it.'

"In vain I made light of it, in vain I appealed to him. He peremptorily forbade my stirring for another hour, asserting that I had injured a small artery, and without caution might find difficulty in reaching the tents, as it would be impossible for him to help me much on the sort of ground over which we had to travel.

"'But the boy, Taylor!--the boy!' I pleaded. 'It would be awful to leave him here.'

"'Who said he was to be left?' retorted the doctor crossly. 'I'm going to carry him up as soon as I've finished bandaging your leg. Don't be in such a blessed hurry.'

"'Carry him! You can't do it up that slope, strong as you are, Taylor--I know you can't.'

"'Can't?' he echoed, as he stood up from his labours. 'Look at him and say can't again--if you can.'

"I looked and saw that the boy, but half conscious, yet restored to the memory of his object by the touch of the snow on which Taylor had laid him while engaged in bandaging my foot, had raised himself painfully on his hands and knees, and was struggling upwards, blindly, doggedly.

"'Damn it all,' continued the doctor fiercely, 'isn't that sight enough to haunt a man if he doesn't try? Besides, I may find that precious flower,--who knows?'

"As he spoke he stooped with the gentleness, not so much of sympathy, as of long practice in suffering, over the figure which, exhausted by its brief effort, already lay prostrate on the snow.

"'What is--the Presence--going--to do?' moaned Amra doubtfully, as he felt the strong arms close round him.

"'You and I are going to find the remission of sins together at Amar-nâth,' replied the Presence with a bitter laugh.

"The boy's head fell back on the doctor's shoulder as if accustomed to the resting-place. 'Amar-nâth!' he murmured. 'Yes! I am Amar-nâth.'

"So I sat there helpless, and watched them up the slope. Every slip, every stumble, seemed as if it were my own. I clenched my hands and set my teeth as if I too had part in the supreme effort, and when the straining figure passed out of sight I hid my face and tried not to think. It was the longest hour I ever spent before Taylor's voice holloing from the cliff above roused me to the certainty of success.

"'And the boy?' I asked eagerly.

"'Dead by this time, I expect,' replied the doctor shortly. 'Come on,--there's a good fellow,--we haven't a moment to lose. I must look again for the flower to-morrow.'

"But letters awaiting our return to camp recalled him to duty on account of cholera in the regiment; so there was an end of anemone hunting. The 101st suffered terribly, and Taylor was in consequence hotter than ever over experiments. The result you know."

"Yes, poor fellow! but the anemone? I don't understand how it came here."

My friend paused. "That is the odd thing. I was looking after the funeral and all that, for Taylor and I were great friends--he left me that herbarium in memory of our time in Cashmere. Well, when I went over to the house about an hour before to see everything done properly, his bearer brought me one of those little flat straw baskets the natives use. It had been left during my absence, he said, by a young Brahman, who assured him that it contained something which the great doctor sahib had been very anxious to possess, and which was now sent by some one to whom he had been very kind.

"'You told him the sahib was dead, I suppose?' I asked.

"'This slave informed him that the master had gained freedom, but he replied it was no matter, as all his task was this.' On opening the basket I found a gourd such as the disciples carry round for alms, and in it, planted among gypsum debris, was that anemone; or rather that is a part of it, for I put some in Taylor's coffin."

"Ah! I presume the gosain--Victor Emanuel, I think you called him--sent the plant; he knew of the doctor's desire?"

"Perhaps. The bearer said the Brahman was a very handsome boy, very fair, dressed in the usual black antelope skin of the disciple. It is a queer story anyhow--is it not?"

HARVEST.

[Respectfully dedicated to our law-makers in India, who, by giving to the soldier-peasants of the Punjab the novel right of alienating their ancestral holdings, are fast throwing the land, and with it the balance of power, into the hands of money-grubbers; thus reducing those who stood by us in our time of trouble to the position of serfs.]

"Ai! Daughter of thy grandmother," muttered old Jaimul gently, as one of his yoke wavered, making the handle waver also. The offender was a barren buffalo doomed temporarily to the plough, in the hopes of inducing her to look more favourably on the first duty of the female sex, so she started beneath the unaccustomed