the Oriental's fatalistic attitude
towards disease and death. Perhaps only those who have had close
dealings with the British officer in time of action or emergency
realise, to the full, the effective qualities hidden under a careless
or conventional exterior:--the vital force, the pluck, endurance, and
irrepressible spirit of enterprise, which--it has been aptly said--make
him, at his best, the most romantic figure of our modern time.

And while indefatigable soldiers fought the enemy in camp and in the
Lines, Dudley Norton, O.S.I., Deputy Commissioner, and ruler-in-chief
of the station, fought him no less energetically in the bazaar and
native city; an even more heart-breaking task. For here was no
disciplined body of men, but a swarm of prejudiced individuals, caring
nothing for infection, and everything for the sanctity of house and
caste. Precautions and sanitary measures had to be carried at the
point of the bayonet; and they were so carried. For Dudley Norton, no
novice at Frontier work, had long since made himself wholesomely feared
and respected throughout the Derajat; while, among the Maliks of his
district, his hawk-like eyes gleaming under heavy brows were accredited
with the power of watching a man's thoughts at their birth. A
reputation too useful to be discouraged!

Like all detached frontier civilians, he practically lived at the
station mess; except on fugitive occasions, when a placidly handsome
woman, bearing his name, vouchsafed him a flying visit from home; for
no other reason--said the evil-minded--than to establish a right-of-way
over her property. At these times Norton welcomed, and entertained his
wife with a scrupulous politeness and concern for her physical
well-being that was a tragedy in itself; and eventually 'saw her off'
at the nearest railway station with a sigh of relief. For, once--in a
former life, it seemed--he had been in love with her; and the ghost of
a dead passion is an ill companion at bed and board. At the present
moment, he had seen neither her nor his only son for more than five
years; and of the small daughter, whose coming had transfigured his
life, there remained only a cross in Kohat cemetery, and a faded photo
of the flagrantly unnatural type that prevailed in the late 'seventies.
But the man who gives his heart to the Indian Borderland must steel
himself to forgo much that, in the arrogance of youth, he has deemed
indispensable to happiness, or even to living