by
the asking.

"Nay, sahib; why buy horses here? These Bombay traders have only crows'
meat to sell to the ill-advised. I have horses, and spare horses for
the journey; and in Rajputana I have horses waiting for thee--seven,
all told--sufficient for a young officer. Six of them are
country-bred-sand-weaned--a little wild perhaps, but strong, and up to
thy weight. The seventh is a mare, got by thy father's stallion Aga
Khan (him that made more than a hundred miles within a day under a
fifteen-stone burden, with neither food nor water, and survived!). A
good mare, sahib--indeed a mare of mares--fit for thy father's son. That
mare I give thee. It is little, sahib, but my best; I am a poor man. The
other six I bought--there is the account. I bought them cheaply, paying
less than half the price demanded in each case--but I had to borrow and
must pay back."

Young Cunningham was hard put to it to keep his voice steady as he
answered. This man was a stranger to him. He had a hazy recollection
of a dozen or more bearded giants who formed a moving background to his
dreams of infancy, and he had expected some sort of welcome from one or
two perhaps, of his father's men when he reached the north. But to have
men borrow money that they might serve him, and have horses ready for
him, and to be met like this at the gate of India by a man who admitted
he was poor, was a little more than his self-control had been trained as
yet to stand.

"I won't waste words, Mahommed Gunga," he said, half-choking.
"I'll--er--I'll try to prove how I feel about it."

"Ha! How said I? Thy father's son, I said! He, too, was no believer in
much promising! I was his servant, and will serve him still by serving
thee. The honor is mine, sahib, and the advantage shall be where thy
father wished it."

"My father would never have had me--"

"Sahib, forgive the interruption, but a mistake is better checked. Thy
father would have flung thee ungrudged, into a hell of bayonets, me,
too, and would have followed after, if by so doing he could have served
the cause he held in trust. He bred thee, fed thee, and sent thee
oversea to grow, that in the end India might gain! Thou and I are
but servants of the peace, as he was. If I serve thee, and thou the
Raj--though the two of us were weaned on the milk of war and get our
bread by war--we will none the less serve peace! Aie! For what is honor
if a soldier lets it rust? Of what use is service, mouthed and ready,