same training he kept his pores open and his mouth shut.

The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where
he tasted utter loneliness in subaltern's quarters,--one room and
one bullock-trunk,--and, with his mess, learned the new life from the
beginning. But there were horses in the land-ponies at reasonable price;
there was polo for such as could afford it; there were the disreputable
remnants of a pack of hounds; and Cottar worried his way along without
too much despair. It dawned on him that a regiment in India was nearer
the chance of active service than he had conceived, and that a man might
as well study his profession. A major of the new school backed this idea
with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated a library of military
works, and read and argued and disputed far into the nights. But the
adjutant said the old thing: "Get to know your men, young un, and they
'll follow you anywhere. That's all you want--know your men." Cottar
thought he knew them fairly well at cricket and the regimental sports,
but he never realised the true inwardness of them till he was sent off
with a detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud fort near a rushing
river which was spanned by a bridge of boats. When the floods came they
went forth and hunted strayed pontoons along the banks. Otherwise there
was nothing to do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled. They
were a sickly crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the
worst men. Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then
sent down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.

"I wouldn't blame you for fightin'," said he, "if you only knew how to
use your hands; but you don't. Take these things, and I'll show you."
The men appreciated his efforts. Now, instead of blaspheming and
swearing at a comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they could take him
apart, and soothe themselves to exhaustion. As one explained whom Cottar
found with a shut eye and a diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood through
an embrasure: "We tried it with the gloves, sir, for twenty minutes, and
that done us no good, sir. Then we took off the gloves and tried it that
way for another twenty minutes, same as you showed us, sir, an' that
done us a world o' good. 'T wasn't fightin', sir; there was a bet on."

Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such as
racing across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of torn paper,
and to