er all.

They came up to the boulders on which Miss Allardyce's horse had
blundered.

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race,
aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically "Jao!"
The pony had crossed the river-bed.

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing Wee
Willie Winkie could not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted and
why they did not depart. Other men with most evil faces and
crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till,
soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty
strong. Miss Allardyce screamed.

"Who are you?" said one of the men.

"I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once.
You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into
cantonments and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself,
and that the Colonel's son is here with her."

"Put our feet into the trap?" was the laughing reply. "Hear this boy's
speech!"

"Say that I sent you--I, the Colonel's son. They will give you
money."

"What is the use of this talk? Take up the child and the girl, and we
can at least ask for the ransom. Ours are the villages on the
heights," said a voice in the background.

These were the Bad Men--worse than Goblins--and it needed all Wee
Willie Winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. But
he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's ayah,
would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, he, as future
Colonel of the 195th, had that grim regiment at his back.

"Are you going to carry us away?" said Wee Willie Winkie, very
blanched and uncomfortable.

"Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur," said the tallest of the men, "and eat
you afterward."

"That is child's talk," said Wee Willie Winkie. "Men do not eat men."

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on firmly--"And if you
do carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will come up in a
day and kill you all without leaving one. Who will take my message to
the Colonel Sahib?"

Speech in any vernacular--and Wee Willie Winkie had a colloquial
acquaintance with three--was easy to the boy who could not yet manage
his "r's" and "th's" aright.

Another man joined the conference, crying: "Oh, foolish men! What this
babe says is true. He is the heart's heart of those white troops. For
the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment
will