this
particular time, Surji Rao found it very difficult to congratulate
himself.

It all came out the day before the one fixed for the expedition.
His Highness, being in great spirits, had ordered a shooting
competition, and the men were served from the new stores supplied
to the State of Chita by Petroff Gortschakin of St. Petersburg.
The Maharajah drove out to the ranges to look on, and all his
Ministers with him. All, that is, except the Minister of the
Treasury, who begged to be excused; he was so very unwell.

Some of the men knelt and clicked and reloaded half a dozen times
before they could fire; some were luckier, and fired the first time
or the third without reloading. They glanced suspiciously at one
another and hesitated, while there grew a shining heap of
unexploded cartridges, a foot high, under the Maharajah's very
nose. His Highness looked on stupefied for ten minutes, then burst
into blazing wrath. Maun Rao rode madly about examining,
inquiring, threatening.

'Our cartridges are filled with powdered charcoal,' he cried,
smiting one of them between two stones to prove his words. There
was an unexpected noise, and the noble General jumped into the air,
bereft of the largest half of his curled moustache. That one was
not. Then they all went furiously back to the palace. The only
other incident of that day which it is worth our while to chronicle
is connected with Surji Rao and the big shoe. The big shoe was
administered to Surji Rao by a man of low caste, in presence of the
entire court and as many of the people of Lalpore as chose to come
and look on. It was very thoroughly administered, and afterwards
Surji Rao was put formally outside the city gates, and told that
the king desired never to look upon his black face again. Which
was rubbing it in rather unfairly, as His Highness's own complexion
was precisely the same shade. With great promptitude Surji Rao
took the road to meet the English and sell his information, but
this possibility occurred to the Maharajah soon enough to send men
after him to frustrate it.

'There shall be at least enough sound cartridges in his bargain for
that,' said His Highness grimly.

The Chitan spirit did not flourish quite so vaingloriously at the
council that night, and there was no more talk about the sky
falling upon dauntless Chitan heads. The sky had fallen, and the
effect was rather quenching than otherwise. The previous stores
were counted over,