that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said
the captain of the Lushkar team.

"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure
that wept as though it would never cease.

"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."

The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a
horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his
diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the
throat of the on-looker to close at the top.

"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to
send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."

Now the adjutant loved his rifles. They were to him as his
grandchildren--the men standing in the first place. He grunted
rebelliously: "I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's made
that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse."

The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity
in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown
when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the
White Hussars. They were, in rather proud of it.

"Is he going to cry all night?" said the colonel, "or are we supposed
to sit up with Little Mildred's guest until he feels better?"

The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.
Outside, the wheels of the first of those bidden to the festivities
crunched the roadway.

"Oh, my God!" said the man in the chair, and every soul in the mess
rose to his feet. Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he
ought to have been given the Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry
in a fight against overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with
his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment,
and pausing only by the colonel's chair to say, "This isn't _our_
affair, you know, sir," led the team into the veranda and the gardens.
Hira Singh was the last, and he looked at Dirkovitch as he moved. But
Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy paradise of his own. His lips
moved without sound, and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.

"White--white all over," said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. "What a
pernicious renegade[15] he must be! I wonder where he came from?"

The col