it over for an hour, and at the end of it decided Cunningham
should go to Howrah, provided a brigadier could be induced without too
much argument to see reason.

"The Brigadier probably wants to keep him, and his Colonel will raise
all the different kinds of Cain there are!" suggested the man who had
begun the discussion.

"I've seen brigadiers before now reduced to a proper sense of their
own unimportance!" remarked another man. And he was connected with the
Treasury. He knew.

But a week later, when the papers were sent to the Brigadier for
signature, he amazed everybody by consenting without the least
objection. Nobody but he knew who his visitor had been the night before.

"How did you know about it, Mahommed Gunga?" he demanded, as the veteran
sat and faced him over the tent candle, his one lean leg swaying up and
down, as usual, above the other.

"Have club servants not got ears, sahib?"

"And you--?"

"I, too, have ears--good ones!"

The Brigadier drummed his fingers on the table, hesitating. No officer,
however high up in the service, likes to lose even a subaltern from his
command when that subaltern is worth his salt.

"Let him go, sahib! You have seen how we Rangars honor him--you may
guess what difference he might make in a crisis. Sign, sahib--let him
go!"

"But--where do you come in? What have you had to do with this?"

"First, sahib, I tested him thoroughly. I found him good. Second, I told
tales about him, making him out better than even he is. Third, I made
sure that all those in authority at Peshawur should hate him. That
would have been impossible if he had been a fool, or a weak man, or
an incompetent; but any good man can be hated easily. Fourth, sahib, I
sent, by the hand of a man of mine, a message to Everton-sahib at Abu
reporting to him that it was not in Howrah as it should be, and warning
him that a sahib should be sent there. I knew that he would listen to a
hint from me, and I knew that he had no one in his office whom he could
send. Then, sahib, I brought matters to a head by bringing every man of
merit whom I could raise to salute him and make an outrageous exhibition
of him. That is what I have done!"

"One would think you were scheming for a throne, Mahommed Gunga!"

"Nay, sahib, I am scheming for the peace of India! But there will be war
first."

"I know there will be war," said the Brigadier. "I only wish I could
make the other sahibs realize it."

"Will you sign t