Fool that I was! idiot!—­upon my return to the fort, to have been anxious about my personal appearance, and to have spent a couple of hours in removing the artificial blackening from my beard and complexion, instead of going to examine my prisoner—­when his escape would have been prevented.  O foppery, foppery!—­it was that cursed love of personal appearance which had led me to forget my duty to my general, my country, my monarch, and my own honor!

Thus it was that the escape took place:—­My own fellow of the Irregulars, whom I had summoned to dress me, performed the operation to my satisfaction, invested me with the elegant uniform of my corps, and removed the Pitan’s disguise, which I had taken from the back of the prostrate Bobbachy Bahawder.  What did the rogue do next?—­Why, he carried back the dress to the Bobbachy—­he put it, once more, on its right owner; he and his infernal black companions (who had been won over by the Bobbachy with promises of enormous reward), gagged Macgillicuddy, who was going the rounds, and then marched with the Indian coolly up to the outer gate, and gave the word.  The sentinel, thinking it was myself, who had first come in, and was as likely to go out again,—­(indeed my rascally valet said that Gahagan Sahib was about to go out with him and his two companions to reconnoitre,)—­opened the gates, and off they went!

This accounted for the confusion of my valet when I entered!—­and for the scoundrel’s speech, that the lieutenant had just been the rounds;—­he had, poor fellow, and had been seized and bound in this cruel way.  The three men, with their liberated prisoner, had just been on the point of escape, when my arrival disconcerted them:  I had changed the guard at the gate (whom they had won over likewise); and yet, although they had overcome poor Mac, and although they were ready for the start, they had positively no means for effecting their escape, until I was ass enough to put means in their way.  Fool! fool! thrice besotted fool that I was, to think of my own silly person when I should have been occupied solely with my public duty.

From Macgillicuddy’s incoherent accounts, as he was gasping from the effects of the gag and the whiskey he had taken to revive him, and from my own subsequent observations, I learned this sad story.  A sudden and painful thought struck me—­my precious box!—­I rushed back, I found that box—­I have it still.  Opening it, there, where I had left ingots, sacks of bright tomauns, kopeks and rupees, strings of diamonds as big as ducks’ eggs, rubies as red as the lips of my Belinda, countless strings of pearls, amethysts, emeralds, piles upon piles of bank-notes—­I found—­a piece of paper! with a few lines in the Sanscrit language, which are thus, word for word, translated: 

“Epigram.

“(On disappointing a certain Major.)

“The conquering Lion return’d with his prey,
And safe in his cavern he set it,
The sly little fox stole the booty away;
And, as he escaped, to the lion did say,
‘aha! don’t you wish you may get it?’”