to face death with dignity.

But Brown knew practically nothing, and understood still less, of what
was happening. He had Juggut Khan's word for it that Jailpore was in
flames, and that all save four of its European population had been
killed. He believed that to be a probably exaggerated statement of
affairs, but he did not blink the fact that he might expect to be
overwhelmed almost without notice, and at any minute. That was a fact
which he accepted, for the sake of argument and as a working-basis on
which to build a plan of some kind--His orders were to hold that post,
and he would hold it until relieved by General Baines or death. But
there are several ways of holding a hot coal besides the rather obvious
one of sitting on it.

It would have been a fine chance to be theatrical, had play-acting been
in his line. Many and many a full-blown general has risen to authority
and fame by means of absolutely useless gallery-play. He believed that
he would presently be relieved by General Baines, who he felt sure would
march at once on Jailpore; and had he chosen to he could have addressed
the men, have set them to throwing up defenses and have made a nice
theatrical redoubt that he could have held quite easily with the help
of nine men for a day or two. And since the really worthwhile things go
often unrewarded, but the gallery-plays never, nobody would have blamed
him had he chosen some such course as that.

But Brown's idea of holding down a place was to make that place a thorn
in the side of the enemy. And since he did not know who was the enemy,
or where he was, nor why he was an enemy, nor when he would attack, he
proposed to find out these things for himself preparatory to making the
said enemy as uncomfortable as his meager resources would permit, when
eked out by an honest "dogged-does-it" brain.

He buried the three men whom Fate had seemed to value at the price of a
fakir's freedom. And, being a religious man, to whom religion was a fact
and the rest of the universe a theory, he was able to say a full funeral
service over them from memory. He said it at the grave-end, with a
lantern in his hand and one man facing him across the grave--as the
English used to drink when the Danes had landed, each watching for the
glint of steel beyond the other's shoulder.

And, four on each side of the trench that they had dug, the remainder
knelt and faced the night each way--partly from enforced piety, and
partly because eig