behind the other, from the hut that he had
left. They seemed to feel the heat more than Brown did, as they fell in
line before Brown's sword. There was no flag, and no flag-pole in that
nameless health-resort, so the sword, without its scabbard, was doing
duty, point downward in the ground, as a totem-pole of Empire. Brown had
stuck it there, like Boanerges' boots, and there it stayed from sunrise
until sunset, to be displaced by whoever dared to do it, at his peril.

They had no clock. They had nothing, except the uniforms and arms of
the Honorable East India Company, as issued in this year of Our
Lord, 1857--a cooking-pot or two, a kettle, a little money and a
butcher-knife. Their supper bleated miserably some twenty yards away,
tied to a tree, and a lean. Punjabi squatted near it in readiness to buy
the skin. It was a big goat, but it was mangy, so he held only two annas
in his hand. The other anna (in case that Brown should prove adamant)
was twisted in the folds of his pugree, but he was prepared to perjure
himself a dozen times, and take the names of all his female ancestors in
vain, before he produced it.

The sun flattened a little more at the bottom, and began to move
quickly, as it does in India--anxious apparently to get away from the
day's ill deeds.

"Shoulder umms!" commanded Brown. "General salute! Present-umms!"

The red sun slid below the sky-line, and the night was on them, as
though somebody had shut the lid. Brown stepped to the sword, jerked it
out of the ground and returned it to his scabbard in three motions.

"Shoulder-umms! Order-umms! Dismiss!" The men filed back into the hut
again, disconsolately, without swearing and without mirth. They had
put the sun to bed with proper military decency. They would have seen
humor--perhaps--or an excuse for blasphemy in the omission of such a
detail, but it was much too hot to swear at the execution of it.

Besides, Brown was a strange individual who detested swearing, and it
was a very useful thing, and wise, to humor him. He had a way of his
own, and usually got it.

Brown posted a sentry at the hut-door, and another at the crossroads
which he was to guard, then went round behind the but to bargain with
the goatskin-merchant. But he stopped before he reached the tree.

"Boy!" he called, and a low-caste native servant came toward him at a
run.

"Is that fakir there still?"

"Ha, sahib!"

"Ha? Can't you learn to say 'yes,' like a human being?"