rspiring Britons strong, continued marching, loaded down with
haversacks and ammunition and resolve.

It was met, long before the jackals had dug down to General Baines'
remains, by the advance-guard of Colonel Kendrick's column, which was
coming out of Harumpore because things were not brisk enough in that
place to keep it busy. Kendrick himself was riding with the cavalry
detachment that led the way southward.

"Who's in command now?" he asked, for they had told him of General
Baines' death by poison.

"I am," said a gray-haired officer who rode up at that moment.

"I'm your senior, sir, by two years," answered Kendrick.

"Then you command, sir."

"Very good. Enough time's been wasted. The column can wait here until my
main body reaches us. Then we'll march at once on Jailpore. This idea
of leaving Jailpore to its fate is nonsense! The rebels are in strength
there, and they have perpetrated an abominable outrage. There we will
punish them, or else we'll all die in the attempt! If we have to raze
Jailpore to the ground, and put every man in it to the sword before we
find the four Europeans supposed to be left alive there, our duty is
none the less obvious! Here comes my column. Tell the men to be ready to
march in ten minutes."

He turned his horse, to look through the dust at the approaching column,
but the man who had been superseded touched him on the sleeve.

"What's that? Better have a rest? Tired out, you say? Oh! Form them all
up in hollow square, then, and I'll say a few words to them. There are
other ways of reviving a leg-weary column than by letting it lie down."

Ten minutes later a dull roar rose up through a steel-shot dust-cloud,
and three thousand helmets whirled upward, flashing in the sun. Three
thousand weary men had given him his answer! There was no kind of handle
to it; no reserve--nothing but generous and unconditional allegiance
unto hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, disease or death. It takes a real
commander to draw that kind of answer from a tired-out column, but it
is a kind of answer, too, that makes commanders! It is not mere talk, on
either side. It means that by some sixth sense a strong man and his men
have discovered something that is good in each other.

XI.

"You've made good time, friend Juggut Khan!" said Brown, advancing to
meet him where the men and the fakir and the interpreter would not be
able to Overhear.

"Sahib, I killed one horse--the horse you looted fo