Hussars[3] in the
city of Peshawur,[4] which stands at the mouth of that narrow
sword-cut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated, after the manner of the
Russians, with little enameled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
hopeless task or case by the Black Tyrones[5], who, individually and
collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy and mixed
spirits of all kinds, had striven in all hospitality to make him
drunk. And when the Black Tyrones, who are exclusively Irish, fail to
disturb the peace of head of a foreigner, that foreigner is certain to
be a superior man. This was the argument of the Black Tyrones, but
they were ever an unruly and self-opinionated regiment, and they
allowed junior subalterns of four years' service to choose their
wines. The spirits were always purchased by the colonel and a
committee of majors. And a regiment that would so behave may be
respected but cannot be loved.

The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
charging the enemy. There was a brandy that had been purchased by a
cultured colonel a few years after the battle of Waterloo. It has been
maturing ever since, and it was a marvelous brandy at the purchasing.
The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in
the teak forests of upper Burmah[6] or the slime of the Irrawaddy[7].
And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of
an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels,
because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of
supply might be found. The officer on whose head the champagne
choosing lay was forbidden the use of tobacco for six weeks previous
to sampling.

This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that
that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy--the green and
yellow and white liqueurs did not count--was placed at the absolute
disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely--even more
than among the Black Tyrones.

But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White
Hussars were--"My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and
"Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the
glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia
when their hearts and their territories should run side by side, and
the