ll. He is priest-ridden, priest-taught, and fit to be
nothing but a priest. Who knows how young Cunnigan will shape? Where is
he? Overseas yet! He must prove himself, as his father did, before he
can hope to lead a free regiment of horse!"

"Then Cunnigan-bahadur's watch-word 'For the peace of India,' is
dead-died with him?" asked Mahommed Gunga. "We are each for our own
again?"

"I have spoken!" answered Alwa. As the biggest clan-chief left on all
that countryside, he had a right to speak before the others, and he
knew that what he said would carry weight when they had all ridden home
again, and the report had gone abroad in ever-widening rings. "If the
English can hold India, let them! I will not fight against them, for
they are honest men for all their madness. If they cannot, then I am for
Rajputana, not India--India may burn or rot or burst to pieces, so long
as Rajputana stands! But--" He paused a moment, and looked at each man
in turn, and tapped his sabre-hilt, "--if a Cunnigan-bahadur were among
us--a man whom I could trust to lead me and mine and every man--I would
lend him my sword for the sheer honor of helping him hack truth out of
corruption! I have nothing more to say!"

"One word more, cousin!" said Mahommed Gunga. "I was risaldar in
Cunnigan-bahadur's regiment of horse. There was more than mere
discipline between us. I ate his salt. Once--when he might have saved
himself the trouble without any daring to reproach him--he risked his
own life, and a troop, and his reputation to save a woman of my family
from capture, and something worse. There was never a Rajput or any other
native woman wronged while he was with us."

"Well?"

"I am no friend of Christian priests--of padres. But--"

"She who rode by just now? What, then?"

"I ride northward now, and then very likely South again. I can do
nothing in the matter, yet--were he in my shoes, and she a native woman
at the mercy of the troops--Cunnigan-bahadur would have assigned a guard
for her."

"Ho! So I am thy sepoy?" sneered Alwa, standing sideways--looking
sideways--and throwing out his chest. "I am to do thy bidding, guarding
stray padres" (he spoke the word as though it were a bad taste he was
spitting from his mouth), "and herding women without purdah, while thou
ridest on assignations Allah knows where? Since when?"

"I have yet to refuse to guard thy back, or thy good name, Alwa!"
Mahommed Gunga eyed him straight, and thrust his hilt out.