while below us the country lay in outline as from an aeroplane, the hills guarding the Holy City a few miles to the west bathed in an eastern sun. We stood for a few minutes lost in admiration of that superb view; then turning to our Royal host we bade him adieu, with many expressions of grateful thanks, and began the precipitous descent of that rugged pass. One likes to think of the last view of that kindly gentleman, our host, as he stood at the head of the pass to watch his guests out of sight. Born of the tribe and house of the Prophet, had his lot been cast in some fairer atmosphere he might have risen to the seats of the mighty. In appearance he resembled bluff King Hal, and in many other respects he was not dissimilar in character. Generous and broad-minded, clever and unselfish, he stood far above the many princes of Arabia.

It took us some hours to reach the bottom of the pass. In many places one wondered how the animals stood up; while in others the remains of the paved chaussée, built by Mahomet Ali nearly a century ago, afforded, by reason of its slippery surface, an even more precarious foothold. The great Egyptian potentate had constructed the paved road up the pass to deal with the Wahabis, but time had worn away the greater part, and left the remainder more an obstacle than a help.

A short rest at the foot of the pass and the party moved on, accompanied by the Sherif of Taif. Towards sunset we passed the Mount of Ararat (the mountain of knowledge), so called because Arab tradition has it that Adam met again Eve at this mountain. After falling out of Paradise, Eve fell in Arabia and Adam in Ceylon. Two hundred years passed by before the angel Gabriel took compassion on them, and transported Adam to Arabia, where he met Eve at the above-mentioned mountain. The tomb of Eve is to-day at Jeddah, which is an Arabic word signifying "ancestress," or "grandmother.”

At this mountain the high official from Mecca took leave, and went on direct to the Holy City, while we moved in a north-westerly direction to avoid it. Just before it was dark we passed close to Mt. el Nur, or mountain of the light, for it was here in solitude that the great Prophet passed many days in silent meditation before he proclaimed to Arabia his mission.

It was after nine before we halted that night at a well on an open plateau with a full moon. The night was still and clear, around us the mountains, and like some silvery streak the wadi bed stretched away towards the Holy City, nine miles distant. What memories, what visions on that night and in those surroundings were conjured up before our eyes!—the last journey of

"I AM ready, O Lord, when thou callest, but let me rest a little first."

I cannot remember where, or in what country, or on whose tomb, I saw the above epitaph, but I am absolutely certain it must mark the grave of some officer's wife. They lie, at rest, in many lands, and no one else could have thought of an inscription so completely appropriate, or could have felt so very tired of moving.

My idea of heaven is a place where there is no packing or unpacking. Nothing else, no other description of a future life, would appeal to me at all. No packing, no passports, no inoculations necessary-and to stay there for ever, that would be heaven indeed. Wherever I go I want to stay and never move again. For fourteen years I have wandered about Europe, Asia, and Africa. Another four or five years, I suppose, and then a small house, a small motor, and a still smaller income. Will it be possible to find a place not already filled to overflowing with retired generals and colonels. Even in France the pensioned of the British Army have settled in thousands, monopolising every golf links, and scowling at the unfortunate French inhabitants, and wondering quite audibly, I fear,

I.

I cannot imagine what happens to the retired officers of the French Army. Do they die off like flies in winter at the end of their service! Or is it that they in their turn, driven out of their own country by the hosts of the British Army, have invaded another land which I have not yet discovered?

I have seen many retired German generals and colonels. There is a large colony, headed by Sixt von Arnim, living on the banks of the Rhine, not far from Cologne, fierce-looking old men, who daily take their little dachshunds for walks, the said little dachshunds being severely kicked, or roughly pulled along, when they want to stop or bark, or, worse still, wag their little tails at the English woman on her horse, an inoffensive member of a most inoffensive Army of Occupation. Poor little Hun dogs. I would not like to be even the dog of a retired and defeated Prussian general.

I think when we leave the Army, or the Army leaves us, we shall withdraw to a spot I know of in the Western Highlands, twenty-seven miles from a railway station, our only neighbours two magnates who, both having made enor

mous fortunes in the war, will not bother themselves unduly with the poor officer at their gates. I shall fish in the river that runs beneath the windows of the house of my dreams. In spirit I have heard the sound of that river in many lands, and some day I shall hear it again in reality.

Did I say fish 1-nay, at first I shall not even fish, but, surrounded by a horde of dogs of all shapes, sizes, and breeds, I shall just sit and look and listen to the river. The dogs can hunt rats, as that entails no exertion on my part, and but little on the part of the rats.

"The autumn hues of the river-banks are the river-banks' affair," is, I think, a Chinese proverb, and one which aptly describes my feelings. I do not care what happens to any thing, be it people or riverbanks, as long as I can have peace. So I feel now, though perhaps when I am free I shall find it impossible to stay in one place. It is possible, even probable, that I may not be able to keep from packing. Moving and packing have become horrible habits, a part of my life.

Sometimes when fate has been kind, and we have been stationed for a few weeksonce it was a few months in a pleasant place, I have had a maid; but, alas! we have always moved on so quickly, and one move as done in the Army is usually enough for a They cannot endure

maid.

the perpetual changing and packing. I cannot endure it either, but I have to try. They do not like hotel life, or the North of England, Germany or Ireland, as the case may be; most likely I do not like it either. But, then, I do not belong to a class that can choose where it will live or not live. I merely go where I am sent, and am only thankful when the method of my going is not too unpleasant or abrupt, and if I find a moderately sound roof over my head at the other end. I struggled between laughter and annoyance when a maid I took out to India-second-class, it is true, but at vast expense-accused me of having taken her out steerage. She had some grounds for thinking this, I must own; but had the heads of the august company on whose smallest and most uncomfortable ship we were kindly permitted to travel, heard her remarks, I tremble to think what would have happened. But more of this company anon. It is not a subject that any one who has travelled much to the East can keep off long; neither, unfortunately, can one keep off their boats.

I was very young and optimistic when I married, and did not take life calmly, and I could not understand life in the Army. I am not sure that I understand it now, but I am acquiring, if I have not completely acquired, that placid disposition and that total lack of imagination so necessary

in an officer's wife. I used to worry and to make plans months ahead. This, of course, spells lunacy in a life where it is impossible to say where you will be on the same day the following week; where your whole life is liable to be altered at twenty-four hours' notice; when every arrangement-week-end to a wedding -is made with the proviso leave permitting; and nowadays, with Sinn Fein and strikes and Poles and plebiscites and all the other horrors of peace, how seldom if ever does leave permit.

Malta was my first station, and I started out so lightheartedly to join my husband. I do not seem to have done much else since. My life seems to have been spent in joining or endeavouring to join him, faint but persevering, except for occasional intervals, when positively panting from my exertions to keep pace with his rapid movements from Asia to Europe and back again, I have retired from the unequal struggle and lived the life of a civilian at large. My first journey to Malta had its pleasant moments. I love seeing new places, but oh! the discomfort involved in doing so. The boat from Marseilles to Malta, a French one, was a horrid revelation. I shared my cabin with a French woman and two babies and a host of lesser creatures. I woke up in the night to find these last advancing methodically to attack me, long columns in single

file, all eyes and ages. I aroused my companion with a scream. Mais c'est souvent comme ca dans les pays chaud,' was her sole comment. I rushed to the bathroom, but the bath was full of grapes, so, hastily dressing, I fled on deck. There I forgathered with a gentleman travelling in whisky, but who, fortunately for me, had large quantities of Keating's Powder. He gallantly came to my rescue ; without his kindly aid I could never have faced my husband. The bride of a month before to arrive one mass of bites! As well as lack of imagination, nerves of iron, perfect health, and unfailing optimism, one other qualification is essential in an officer's wife, and that is a skin like leather, impervious to the bites of all the odd insects it is our fate so frequently to meet. Some people remember places for their beauty, others frankly own that it is the food they remember bestthe prawn curry at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo, for instance. I also have pleasant recollections of those prawns, but it is the mosquitoes I remember better. Malta will be for ever associated in my mind with sand-flies; India and Sicily, like Ceylon, with mosquitoes, known to the soldiers for their swiftness, size, and vigour in attack as Handley Pages. Another beauty spot of the world is to me merely a haunt of creatures never mentioned by nice writers. Marseilles is the home of a sort