enough for Mahommed Khan to love and that you are your father's son! And
listen! Don't let me hear you, ever, under any circumstances, breathe a
word of doubt as to that man's loyalty! D'you understand me, sir? You,
a mere subaltern, a puppy just out of his 'teens, an insignificant
jackanapes with two twelve-pounders in your charge, daring to impute
disloyalty to Mahommed Khan!--your impudence! Remember this! That old
Risaldar is the man who rode with your father through the guns at Dera!
He's a pauper without a pension, for all his loyalty, but he went down
the length of India to meet you, at his own expense, when you landed
raw-green from England! And what d'you know of war, I'd like to know,
that you didn't learn from him? Thank your God, sir, that there's
some one there who'll kill your wife before she falls into the Hindus'
hands!"

"But he was going to ride away, sir, to bring an escort!"

"Not before he'd made absolutely certain of her safety!" swore the
colonel with conviction. "Join your section, sir!"

So Harry Bellairs joined his section and trudged along sore-footed at
its side--sore-hearted, too. He wondered whether any one would ever say
as much for him as Colonel Carter had chosen to say for Mahommed Khan,
or whether any one would have the right to say it! He was ashamed of
having left his wife behind and tortured with anxiety--and smarting from
the snub--a medley of sensations that were more likely to make a man of
him, if he had known it, than the whole experience of a year's campaign!
But in the dust and darkness, with the blisters on his heels, and fifty
men, who had overheard the colonel, looking sidewise at him, his plight
was pitiable.

They trudged until the dawn began to rise, bright yellow below the
drooping banian trees; only Colonel Carter and the advance-guard riding.
Then, when they stopped at a stream to water horses and let them graze
a bit and give the men a sorely needed rest, one of the ring of outposts
loosed off his rifle and shouted an alarm. They had formed square in an
instant, with the guns on one side and the men on three, and the colonel
and the wounded in the middle. A thousand or more of the mutineers
leaned on their rifles on the shoulder of a hill and looked them over, a
thousand yards away.

"Send them an invitation!" commanded Colonel Carter, and the left-hand
gun barked out an overture, killing one sepoy. The rest made off in the
direction of Hanadra.

"We're lik