d too difficult for themselves, and awaited confidently the
outcome--the crass mistake, or oversight, or mere misfortune that, with
the aid of a possible court martial, would reduce him to a proper state
of humbleness.

Peshawur, the greatest garrison in northern India, was there on
sufferance, apparently. For lack of energetic men in authority to deal
with them, the border robbers plundered while the troops remained cooped
up within the unhealthiest station on the list. The government itself,
with several thousand troops to back it up, was paying blackmail to the
border thieves! There was not a government bungalow in all Peshawur that
did not have its "watchman," hired from over the border, well paid to
sleep on the veranda lest his friends should come and take tribute in an
even more unseemly manner.

The younger men, whose sense of fitness had not yet been rotted by
climate and system and prerogative, swore at the condition; there were
one or two men higher up, destined to make history, whose voices, raised
in emphatic protest, were drowned in the drone of "Peace! Peace is the
thing to work for. Compromise, consideration, courtesy, these three are
the keys of rule." They failed to realize that cowardice was their
real keynote, and that the threefold method that they vaunted was quite
useless without a stiffening of courage.

So brave men, who had more courtesy in each of their fingers than
most of the seniors had all put together, had to bow to a scandalous
condition that made England's rule a laughing-stock within a stone's
throw of the city limits. And they had to submit to the indecency of
seeing a new, inexperienced arrival picked for the task of commanding a
body of irregulars, for no other reason than because it was considered
wise to make an exhibition of him.

Cunningham became half policeman, half soldier, in charge of a small
special force of mounted men engaged for the purpose of patrol. He had
nothing to do with the selection of them; that business was attended
to perfunctorily by a man very high up in departmental service, who
considered Cunningham a nuisance. He was a gentleman who did not know
Mahommed Gunga; another thing he did not know was the comfortable feel
of work well done; so he was more than pleased when Mahommed Gunga
dropped in from nowhere in particular--paid him scandalously untrue
compliments without a blush or a smile and offered to produce the
required number of men at once.

Onl