er befitting their oath
of service. He had orders, and he would pass them on according to his
interpretation of them. He would obey his orders, and they theirs, and
the rest was no business of his or anybody's.

They put the fakir in a hut; where Juggut Khan--too weary for
foraging--stood guard over him. When a crowd collected round the hut,
and Juggut Khan applied the butt of a lighted cigarette to the tender
skin between the fakir's shoulder-blades, the anxious fakir-worshipers
were told that all was well. They were to let the white soldiers take
two wagons, or three even, if they wanted them. They were to return
to their houses at once, and hide, lest the devils who would shortly
overwhelm the white men should make mistakes and include them, too, in
the whelming. He, the fakir, intended to take the white men for a little
journey along the road toward Jailpore, where the devils who would deal
with them would have no opportunity to make mistakes. And, since the
natives knew that Jailpore was a rebel stronghold, and that ten white
men and a native would have no chance to do the slightest damage there,
they chose to believe the fakir and to obey him.

Hindus have as stubborn and unalterable a habit of obeying and believing
their priests--when the fancy suits them--as white men of other
religions have.

If the fakir had told them through the doorway of the hut that he
intended going with the white men in the direction of Bholat, they would
most surely have prevented him. But it suited them very well indeed to
have the white men killed elsewhere. It was not likely, but there might
be a column on its way from Bholat now; and if that column came, and
found the bones of British soldiers as well as a burned-out guard-house,
vengeance would be dire and prompt. Between where they were and
Jailpore, the white men could not possibly escape. And at Jailpore,
if not sooner, they must surely die. So they believed the fakir, and
retired to the seclusion of their houses.

It was wonderful, of course, but no more wonderful than a thousand other
happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average were
upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed continent.
Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-carts
should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction of a
plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than that on
the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested f