the
Muhammadan tries to burn his account-books, he will find himself an
inmate of His Majesty's gaol.

The justice which the Muhammadan of the frontier appreciates is a rapid
and appropriate justice, such as used to be meted out by officers in
the days of Nicholson, when the offender might find himself accused,
arrested, judged, and visited with some punishment appropriate to
the crime all within the course of a few days. At the present time he
can, if rich enough, call in a pleader, and get any number of false
witnesses, and his case is inevitably dragged out by the magistrate
by successive postponements for getting the attendance of these
witnesses, or through some technicality of the law; and even when
he does--it may be after the lapse of some months--get a judgment,
the losing party in the suit is at liberty to bring an appeal to the
Sessions Judge, and from him another appeal can be lodged at the High
Court of Lahore, which has so many cases on its lists that it may be
his case will not be taken till after the lapse of two or three years.

The real strength of our administration on the frontier is the
personnel of our officers, for it has always been the man, and not
the system, that governs the country; and there are names of officers
now dead and gone which are still a living power along that frontier,
because they were men who thoroughly knew the people with whom they
had to deal, and whose dauntless and strong characters moulded the
tribes to their will, and exerted such a mesmeric influence over
those wild Afghans that they were ready to follow their feringi
masters through fire and sword with the most unswerving loyalty,
even though they were of an alien faith.

As an example of this, it is related that on a certain frontier
expedition the regiments were passing up a defile on a height, above
which some of the enemy had ensconced themselves in ambush behind
their sangars. The Afghans had been soldiers in the Indian Army,
who had now completed their service and retired to their hills, and
were, as is often the case, using the skill which they had learnt
in their regiments against us. They were about to fire, when one
of them recognized the officer riding at the head of the regiment
as his own Colonel. He stopped the others, and said: "That is our
own Karnal Sahib. We must not fire on him or his regiment." That
regiment was allowed to pass in safety, but they opened fire on the
one which succeeded.