y fifty were required. Mahommed Gunga brought three hundred to select
from, and, when asked to do so in order to save time and trouble, picked
out the fifty best.

"There are your men!" said the Personage off-handedly, when they had
been sworn in in a group. "Be good enough to remember, Mr. Cunningham,
that you are now responsible for their behavior, and for the proper
night patrolling of the city limits."

That was a tall order, and in spite of all of youth's enthusiasm was
enough to make any young fellow nervous. But Mahommed Gunga met him in
the street, saluted him with almost sacrilegious ceremony, and drew him
to one side.

"Have courage, now, bahadur! I ride away to visit my estates (he spoke
of them always in the plural, as though he owned a county or two). You
have under you the best eyes and the keenest blades along the border for
I attended to it! Be ruthless! Use them, work them--sweat them to death!
Keep away from messes and parades; seek no praise, for you will get none
in any case! Work! Work for what is coming!"

"You speak as though the fate of a continent were hanging in the
balance," laughed Cunningham, shaking hands with him.

"I speak truth!" said Mahommed Gunga, riding off and leaving the
youngster wondering.

Now, there was nothing much the matter with the men on either side,
taken in the main, who hated one another on that far-pushed frontier.
Even the insufferable incompetents who held the rotting reins of control
were such because circumstance had blinded them. There was not a man
among the highly placed ones even who would have deliberately placed his
own importance or his own opinion in the scale against India's welfare.
There was not a border thief but was ready to respect what he could
recognize as strong-armed justice.

The root of the trouble lay in centralization of authority, and rigid
adherence to the rule of seniority. Combined, these two processes had
served to bring about a state of things that is nearly unbelievable when
viewed in the light of modern love for efficiency. Young men, with the
fire of ambition burning in them and a proper scorn for mere superficial
ceremony, had to sweat their tempers and bow down beneath the yoke of
senile pompousness.

Strong, savage, powder-weaned Hill-tribesmen--inheritors of egoistic
independence and a love of loot--laughed loud and long and openly at
System that prevented officers from taking arms against them until
authority could come