"Why should you?" she murmured, looking up to him. "Why should he go, after all? This has been such a silly affair. I wonder if that woman thought that anything could ever come between you and me? That was what made me think she was really mad." "And an excellent reason," he answered. "Anybody must be insane who dreams of parting us two. It seems as though a year ago I had not loved you at all." "I am so glad," said Corona. "Do you remember, last summer, on the tower at Sarracinesca, I told you that you did not know what love was?" "It was true, Corona-I did not know. But I thought I did. I never imagined what the happiness of love was, nor how great it was, nor how it could enter into every thought." "Into every thought? Into your great thoughts too?" "If any thoughts of mine are great, they are so because you are the mainspring of them," he answered "Will it always be so?" she asked. "You will be a very great man some day, Giovanni; will you always feel that I am something to you?" "Always more than anything to me, more than all of me to gether." "I sometimes wonder," said Corona. "I think I understand you better than I used to do. I like to think that you feel how I understand you when you tell me anything. Of course I am not clever like you, but I love you so much that just while you are talking I seem to understand everything. It is like a flash of light in a dark room." Giovanni kissed her again. "What makes you think that I shall be great, Corona? Nobody "I know "I know it," she said. it, because I love you so. A man like you must be great. There is something in you that nobody guesses but I, that will amaze people some day-I know it." "I wonder if you could tell me what it is? I wonder if it is really there at all?" said Giovanni. "It is ambition," said Corona, gravely. "You are the most ambitious man I ever knew, and nobody has found it out." "I believe it is true, Corona," said Giovanni, turning away and leaning upon the chimney-piece, his head supported on one hand. "I believe you are right. I am ambitious: if I only had the brains that some men have, I would do great things." "You are wrong, Giovanni. It is neither brains nor ambition nor strength that you lack—it is opportunity." "They say that a man who has anything in him creates opportunities for himself," answered Giovanni, rather sadly. "I fear it is because I really have nothing in me that I can do nothing. It sometimes makes me very unhappy to think so. I suppose that is because my vanity is wounded.” "Do not talk like that," said Corona. "You have vanity, of course, but it is of the large kind, and I call it ambition. It is not only because I love you better than any man was ever loved before that I say that. It is that I know it instinctively. I have heard you say that these are unsettled times. Wait; your opportunity will come, as it came often to your forefathers in other centuries." "I hardly think that their example is a good one," replied Giovanni, with a smile. "They generally did something remarkable in remarkable times,' said Corona. "You will do the same. Your father, for instance, would not." "He is far more clever than I," objected Giovanni. "Clever! What passes for cleverness? He is quick, active, a good talker, a man with a ready wit and a sharp answer-kind-hearted when the fancy takes him, cruel when he is so disposed-but not a man of great convictions or of great actions. You are very different from him." "Will you draw my portrait, Corona?" asked Giovanni. of growing cold when others grow hot, and of keeping the full use of your faculties in any situation. When you have made a decision, you cannot be moved from it; but you are open to conviction in argument. You have a great repose of manner, which conceals a very restless brain. All your passions are very strong. You never forgive, never forget, and scarcely ever repent. Beneath all, you have an untamable ambition which has not yet found its proper field. Those are your qualities-and I love them all, and you more than them all." Corona finished her speech by throwing her arms round his neck, and breaking into a happy laugh as she buried her face upon his shoulder. No one who saw her in the world would have believed her capable of those sudden and violent demonstrations-she thought so very cold. was When Giovanni reached home, he was informed that his father had left Rome an hour earlier by the train for Terni, leaving word that he had gone to Aquila. THE HORSE-SUPPLY IN INDIA. THE clouds still lower threaten- considered, is the fact that the ingly on the frontiers of our East- greater part of its most important ern empire, and however firmly constituents are not native to the and securely settled that empire land in which that army has to may appear to be, there are many operate, but have to be drawn influences beneath its smooth and from distant, and, if the command quiet surface which, though quies- of the seas was interfered with at cent at present, still prove, by suffi- any time, precarious sources of ciently distinct signs from time to supply. It is well known to every time, that they are only sleeping, one what a constant expenditure and may, if they ever have an op- there is of the European officers portunity of breaking forth, show and men who form the indispensthemselves with dangerous if not able backbone of the armed forces fatal effect. Physical power has of the three Presidencies; and posformed and established the vast sibly it may be generally partially sovereignty which England wields realised how elaborate are the arover the most civilised, fertile, and rangements which have to be carwealthy portion of Asia; and it ried out to fill the gaps which, is only by maintaining that power even in peace time, show themunimpaired in force and efficiency selves yearly in their ranks, and that she can hope to be able to to keep them duly supplied with await with calm confidence a pos- the complicated and scientific insible breaking storm on the bor- struments of modern war. Our ders of her dominions, or an up- business at present, however, is heaval and convulsion in their not with these points; but we centre. Physical power in the would wish to direct attention to East means essentially military a matter less known, and almost force; and the necessity of main- equally important-viz., the means taining in India an army complete at our disposal for supplying, in in all its parts, and strong in its sufficient numbers and of suffiorganisation and means of supply, ciently good quality, the horses has always been fully recognised, which are to mount our cavalry, and never more so than it is to- British and native, and which are day. Many of the best soldiers to take their places in the teams who are now in their country's of the Royal Artillery. servicé are devoting all their Asia is, more than any other, talents and energy to securing the land of mounted warriors, and their country's dominions and in all its historic struggles and maintaining its assured supremacy conquests crowds of horsemen in that distant land; and every have ever taken a distinguished lesson that has been taught by late part. If in the future we are struggles in all parts of the world compelled to guard our frontier or has been by them eagerly learned, to maintain our internal dominion and its teaching is being carefully by force of arms, masses of cavalry applied. and numerous batteries of wellhorsed artillery will play a most important and perhaps decisive part in the contest; and if it is One of the greatest difficulties which arises when the question of maintaining our Indian army is horse-hair tents in the vast district of Najd in Arabia, and in the lands on both sides of the Tigris and Euphrates. remembered what enormous dis- tribes which pitch their black tances have to be traversed, both to arrive at and to occupy any possible theatre of war, the physical difficulties which in addition are always presented by the conditions of climate and country, and the enormous demands which are consequently made for the expenditure of purely animal force, it may be conceived with what magnitude the question of horse-supply shows in the eyes of the military chiefs and organ- In his lifetime has isers of India. For many years Arabs were sought for and prized above all other horses for use in sport and war in India, and it may be worth while here to quote the description of an an exceptionally perfect animal, such as Every sportsman, they say, the rest, the best." one that outrivals Major Shakespeare thus details the points of the "pearl of his casket" in his book on the wild sports of India :— In our Indian army it is the general custom to arrange all the The gentlest, the gamest, the boldest, horses which are found in its ranks under five heads-as Arabs, Persians, Northerns, country - breds, and Australians or Walers; but these again include a very large variety of classes and many distinct breeds. In days not long since gone by, many excellent horses, which knew no superiors for military purposes, were imported from the Cape of Good Hope; but this source of supply has now been given up, and though many horses are still to be procured in that colony, it is very doubtful whether any animals of the old and specially valuable stamp are now to be found. Whatever our opinion may be as to the actual value of the Arab for military or other purposes, we must still regard him with the amount of veneration that is due to old and unsullied descent, and the halo that surrounds centuries "She was the most beautiful mare I have ever seen, of pure Najd blood, grey, with flea-bitten spots, eyes too large for her head, nostril thin and the hair of her mane and tail so fine expanded, the throat of a game-cock, and soft that the most beautiful woman might have been proud of such texture, and her skin so thin and soft that the thorn-bushes through which I rode her used to tear it; and after many of my runs through the jungle, I have had her, bleeding from the practised upon with a light sabre. thorns, looking as if she had been She was what you would consider in England a pony, 14 hands 1 inches high; but she was as broad almost as a dray-horse, and her tail was set up so high, that, as she moved about her loose-box, you could, stooping, walk between it and the ground. Her feet were black and hard, and the tendons below her hocks and knees were like harp-strings. Add to this that her head was so lean that you might have boiled it without obtaining any flesh from it, and you have a picture of what this desertborn mare was." of great deeds and noble traditions. The pure blood of the desert flowed in the veins of the sires of all the best horses in the world, and the characteristics of the various breeds in different hemispheres are only the results of country and climate on offshoots from the stock, which is Till comparatively recent times, still found among the wandering a very large number of the horses required for the army in India were Arabs, and the great mart to which they were brought was Bombay. Here the wants of the Bombay and Bengal armies were provided for by purchasing-committees. The horses destined for the Madras army and the south of India were landed at Mangalore, and from there were marched by the native dealers to the remount depot at Husur, near Bangalore. The remount agent then took his pick according to the requirements of the service which he represented, paying an average price of Rs. 425 to Rs. 500 per horse, and the remainder were taken to Bangalore, where they found a ready sale. Many animals also found their way to Hyderabad and Madras, and some went south to Ceylon. The ample horse-supply which thus came to the south of the peninsula has, however, entirely ceased, on account of the action of the Government of India, which a few years ago ordered that all army purchases of Arabs should be made in Bombay itself, thus striking a fatal blow at the enterprise of dealers, who had been quite contented to run the risks of the long journey to Bangalore, with the certainty of both a military and civil market, but who would not undertake it when the military wants were provided for in Bombay, and they were tempted by the civil market alone. The present state of affairs is this, that Government has to pay as much at Bombay for the Arab horses required by the Madras army as it formerly used to do at Husur; and it has, in addition, to meet the expense of moving the horses many hundred miles to the military centres, while the whole civil population of the south of India is entirely deprived of any chance of purchasing Arab horses, except the very few stray animals which are brought by individuals from the dealers' stables at Bombay. Melancholy indeed is it to stand in the great open space at Bangalore, where the horse-dealers used to congregate with their stock, which is still called the Arab Lines. The cry of the place is Ichabod. Of all the bargaining crowd only one feeble old man is left, who realised a competency in the business, and still creeps about in turban and caftan, and still tells tales of the brave days of old, when he was one of those who provided horses for soldiers and civilians whose names are history. The general run of Arabs are no doubt first-rate horses, as far as they go, for military purposes, but they are too small to mount satisfactorily any but native cavalry. There are, of course, exceptional animals which have size and power enough for anything, but they are so few that they may be left out of the general estimate which we take of the race. For any soldier whose weight is such that he can be mounted on an Arab, he will be found the hardiest, soundest, and most docile of war-horses. will do an enormous amount of work on very little and very indifferent food, and will always bear himself well and handsomely. In one point only is he, more than other horses, susceptible of disease, and that is his eye, which is liable to cataract. He His great characteristic is his undaunted pluck, which is never more clearly shown than when by any chance he is ill, when all veterinary surgeons will allow that he is a most admirable patient, resisting and throwing off the effects of illness or treatment in a way that no horse of another race can equal. Persian horses have always been found among the most generally |