ing energetically through a network of ravines, nullahs, and
jagged red hills; still dealing out rough justice to unrepentant
Afridis in accordance with instructions from headquarters; or as
nearly in accordance with them as Colonel Buchanan's pronounced views
on the ethics of warfare would permit. For Buchanan was a just man of
independent character, a type not ostentatiously beloved by heads of
departments. He had a reprehensible trick of thinking for himself and
acting accordingly--a habit liable to create havoc among the
card-houses of officialdom; and like all soldiers of the first grade,
he was resolute against the cowardly method of striking at the guilty
through the innocent; resolute in limiting the evils of war to its
authors and active abettors.

He had taken full advantage of his temporary rank to run the
expedition on his own lines; and although his instructions included
the burning of crops, he had kept rigid control over this part of the
programme; giving officers and men free scope for activity in the
demolishing of armed forts and towers, and in skirmishes with the
wild tribes who harried their transport trains, rushed their pickets,
sent playful bullets whizzing through the mess-tent at night, and
generally enjoyed themselves after the rough and ready fashion of the
hillsman across the Border.

The Afridis in truth were merely tired of behaving like good children.
The unstained knives at their belts cried shame on them for their
prolonged abstinence from the legitimate joys of manhood;--the music
of bullets whistling down a gorge, the yielding of an enemy's flesh
under the knife.

Therefore, when Colonel Buchanan and his little force started punitive
operations, they were met by a surprisingly concerted and spirited
resistance. The cunning tribesmen, having got what they wanted in the
shape of excitement, were determined to make the most of it. Thus, the
expedition had flared up into one of those minor guerilla campaigns
which have cost England more, in the lives of picked officers, than
she is ever likely to calculate; being, for the most part, careful and
troubled about weightier matters.

The sweeping movement, organised to include all villages implicated in
the raid, took longer than had been anticipated. The demolishing of
Afridi watch-towers, manned by the finest natural marksmen in the
world, and built on bases proof against everything but gunpowder, is
no child's play; and at almost every