ppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end
of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full
of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from
a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I
had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where
a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived
just as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go
down the carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train.
I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming-red beard, half
covered by a railway-rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him
gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the
light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.

"Tickets again?" said he.

"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He
has gone South for the week!"

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "He
has gone South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just like his
impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't."

"He didn't," I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die
out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off
the sands. I climbed into my own train--not an Intermediate carriage
this time--and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as
a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having
done my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers,
and might, if they blackmailed one of the little rat-trap States
of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious
diffic