r!"

If they pressed him, he would point to his medal ribbons, that he always
wore. "The British gave me those for fighting against the northern
tribes beyond the Himalayas," he would tell them. "The southern
tribes--Bengalis of the south and east--would give better picking than
mere medal ribbons!"

They were not all sure of him. They were not all satisfied why he
should ride on to Peshawur, and decline to stay with them and talk good
sedition.

"I would see how the British are!" he told them. And he told the truth.
But they were not quite satisfied; he would have made a splendid leader
to have kept among them, until he--too--became too powerful and would
have to be deposed in turn.

His own holding was a long way from Peshawur, and he was no rich man
who could afford at a mere whim to ride two long days' march beyond his
goal. Nor was he, as he had explained to Miss McClean, a letter-carrier;
he would get no more than the merest thanks for delivering her letters
to where they could be included in the Government mail-bag. Yet he
left the road that would have led him homeward to his left, and carried
on--quickening his pace as he neared the frontier garrison town, and
wasting, then, no time at all on seeking information. Nobody supposed
that the Pathans and the other frontier tribes were anything but openly
rebellious, and he would have been an idiot to ask questions about their
loyalty.

Because of their disloyalty, and the ever-present danger that they
were, the biggest British garrison in India had to be kept cooped up
in Peshawur, to rot with fever and ague and the other ninety Indian
plagues.

He wanted to see that garrison again, and estimate it, and make up his
mind what exactly, or probably, the garrison would do in the event of
the rebellion blazing out. And he wanted to try once more to warn some
one in authority, and make him see the smouldering fire beneath the
outer covering of sullen silence.

He received thanks for the letters. He received an invitation to take
tea on the veranda of an officer so high in the British service
that many a staff major would have given a month's pay for a like
opportunity. But he was laughed at for the advice he had to give.

"Mahommed Gunga, you're like me, you're getting old!" said the high
official.

"Not so very old, sahib. I was a young man when Cunnigan-bahadur raised
a regiment and licked the half of Rajputana into shape with it. Not too
old, sahib, to wish