s what I got. I knew you'd like
to look at it. Don't grab." (We were all struggling for a sight of the
well-known unformed handwriting.) "I'll read it aloud.

"'Fort Everett, February 19.

"'Dear Dick, or Tertius: The bearer of this is in charge of seventy-five
recruits, all pukka devils, but desirous of leading new lives. They have
been slightly polished, and after being boiled may shape well. I want
you to give thirty of them to my adjutant, who, though God's own ass,
will need men this spring. The rest you can keep. You will be interested
to learn that I have extended my road to the end of the Malo't country.
All headmen and priests concerned in last September's affair worked one
month each, supplying road metal from their own houses. Everett's grave
is covered by a forty-foot mound, which should serve well as a base for
future triangulations. Rutton Singh sends his best salaams. I am
making some treaties, and have given my prisoner--who also sends his
salaams--local rank of Khan Bahadur. "'A. L. Cockran.'

"Well, that was all," said Dick Four, when the roaring, the shouting,
the laughter, and, I think, the tears, had subsided. "I chaperoned the
gang across the border as quick as I could. They were rather homesick,
but they cheered up when they recognized some of my chaps, who had been
in the Khye-Kheen row, and they made a rippin' good lot. It's rather
more than three hundred miles from Fort Everett to where I picked 'em
up. Now, Pussy, tell 'em the latter end o' Stalky as you saw it."

Abanazar laughed a little nervous, misleading, official laugh.

"Oh, it wasn't much. I was at Simla in the spring, when our Stalky, out
of his snows, began corresponding direct with the Government."

"After the manner of a king," suggested Dick Four. "My turn now,
Dick. He'd done a whole let of things he shouldn't have done, and
constructively pledged the Government to all sorts of action."

"'Pledged the State's ticker, eh?" said McTurk, with a nod to me.

"About that; but the embarrassin' part was that it was all so thunderin'
convenient, so well reasoned, don't you know? Came in as pat as if he'd
had access to all sorts of information--which he couldn't, of course."

"Pooh!" said Tertius, "I back Stalky against the Foreign Office any
day."

"He'd done pretty nearly everything he could think of, except strikin'
coins in his own image and superscription, all under cover of buildin'
this infernal road and bein'