there were another Cunnigan to ride with!"

"Well, Mahommed Gunga, you're closer to your wish than you suppose!
Young Cunningham's gazetted, and probably just about starting on his way
out here via the Cape of Good Hope. He should be here in three or four
months at the outside."

"You mean that, sahib?"

"Wish I didn't! The puppy will arrive here with altogether swollen
notions of his own importance and what is due his father's son. He's
been captain of his college at home, and that won't lessen his sense of
self-esteem either. I can foresee trouble with that boy!"

"Sahib, there is a service I could render!"

The Rajput spoke with a strangely constrained voice all of a sudden,
but the Commissioner did not notice it; he was too busy pulling on a
wool-lined jacket to ward off the evening chill.

"Well, risaldar--what then?"

"I think that I could teach the son of Cunnigan-bahadur to be worth his
salt."

"If you'll teach him to be properly respectful to his betters I'll be
grateful to you, Mahommed Gunga."

"Then, sahib, I shall have certain license allowed me in the matter?"

"Do anything you like, in reason, risaldar! Only keep the pup from
cutting his eye-teeth on his seniors' convenience, that's all!"

Mahommed Gunga wasted no time after that on talking, nor did he wait to
specify the nature of the latitude he would expect to be allowed him; he
knew better. And he knew now that the one chance that he sought had been
given him.

Like all observant natives, he was perfectly aware that the British
weakness mostly lay in the age of the senior officers and the slowness
of promotion. There were majors of over fifty years of age, and if a
man were a general at seventy he was considered fortunate and young. The
jealousy with which younger men were regarded would have been humorous
had it not come already so near to plunging India into anarchy.

He did not even trouble to overlook the garrison. He took his leave,
and rode away the long two-day ride to his own place, where a sadly
attenuated rent-roll and a very sadly thinned-down company of servants
waited his coming. There, through fourteen hurried, excited days, he
made certain arrangements about the disposition of his affairs during
an even longer absence; he made certain sales--pledged the rent of fifty
acres for ten years, in return for an advance--and on the fifteenth day
rode southward, at the head of a five-man escort that, for quality, was
worthy of a