en these _nowker log_, the servant-people, and his own _jat_ or
class, the _Sahib-log_, the master-people, were the troopers, splendid
Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Punjabis, men of honour, courage,
physique, tradition. Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly
understood and properly treated--in other words, while properly
officered. (Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or
regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to do so much for
them.)

These men Damocles admired and loved, though even _they_ were apt to
be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang,
and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts'-delights, to
use unkind measures towards the good _bunnia_ and _sowkar_ who had
lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not
known in the Officers' Mess.

The boy preferred the Rissaldar-Major even to some Sahibs of his
acquaintance--that wonderful old man-at-arms, horseman, _shikarri_,
athlete, gentleman. (Yet how strange and sad to see him out of his
splendid uniform, in sandals, _dhotie_, untrammelled shirt-tails,
dingy old cotton coat and loose _puggri_, undistinguishable from a
school-master, clerk, or post-man; so _un_-sahib-like.)

And what a fine riding-master he made for an ambitious, fearless
boy--though Ochterlonie Sahib said he was too cruel to be a good
_horse_-master.

How _could_ people be civilians and live away from regiments? Live
without ever touching swords, lances, carbines, saddles?

What a queer feeling it gave one to see the regiment go past the
saluting base on review-days, at the gallop, with lances down. One
wanted to shout, to laugh--to _cry_. (It made one's mouth twitch and
chin work.)

Oh, to _lead_ the regiment as Father did--horse and man one welded
piece of living mechanism.

Father said you couldn't ride till you had taken a hundred tosses,
been pipped a hundred times. A hundred falls! Surely Father had
_never_ been thrown--it must be impossible for such a rider to come
off. See him at polo.

By his sixth birthday Damocles de Warrenne, stout and sturdy, was an
accomplished rider and never so happy (save when fencing) as when
flogging his active and spirited little pony along the "rides" or over
the dusty _maidans_ and open country of Bimariabad. To receive a
quarter-mile start on the race-course and ride a mile race against
Khodadad Khan on his troop-horse, or with one of the syces on one of
the Co