and again subdivided--one-fifth Mohammedan and four-fifths
Hindoo--clan within clan, and each against the other. Do we own
Rajputana? Nay! Do we rule it? Nay! What were we until Cunnigan-bahadur
came?"

"Ah!" All five men rose with a clank in honor to the memory of that man.
"Cunnigan-bahadur! Show us such another man as he was, and I and mine
ride at his back!" said Alwa. "Not all the English are like Cunnigan!
A Cunnigan could have five thousand men the minute that he asked for
them!"

"Am I a wizard?--Can I cast spells and bring dead men's spirits from
the dead again? I know of no man to take his place," said Mahommed Gunga
sadly.

He was the poorest of them, but they were all, comparatively speaking,
poor men; for the long peace had told its tale on a race of men who are
first gentlemen, then soldiers, and last--least of all--and only as a
last resource, landed proprietors. The British, for whom they had often
fought because that way honor seemed to lie, had impoverished
them afterward by passing and enforcing zemindary laws that lifted
nine-tenths of the burden from the necks of starving tenants. The new
law was just, as the Rajputs grudgingly admitted, but it pinched their
pockets sadly; like the old-time English squires, they would give their
best blood and their last rack-rent-wrung rupee for the cause that
they believed in, but they resented interference with the rack-rents!
Mahommed Gunga had had influence enough with these five landlord
relations of his to persuade them to come and meet him in Howrah City to
discuss matters; the mere fact that he had thought it worth his while
to leave his own little holding in the north had satisfied them that he
would be well worth listening to--for no man rode six hundred miles on
an empty errand. But they needed something more than words before they
pledged the word that no Rajput gentleman will ever break.

"Find us a Cunnigan--bring him to us--prove him to us--and if a blade
worth having from end to end of Rajputana is not at his service, I
myself will gut the Hindoo owner of it! That is my given word!" said
Alwa.

"He had a son," said Mahommed Gunga quietly.

"True. Are all sons like their fathers? Take Maharajah Howrah here; his
father was a man with whom any soldier might be proud to pick a quarrel.
The present man is afraid of his own shadow on the wall--divided between
love for the treasure-chests he dare not broach and fear of a brother
whom he dare not ki