people could not appreciate it. He was perpetually "going Fantee" among
the natives, which, of course, no man with any sense believes in. He was
initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad once, when he was on leave; he
knew the Lizard-Song of the Sansis, and the Halli-Hukk dance, which is
a religious can-can of a startling kind. When a man knows who dances the
Halli-Hukk, and how, and when, and where, he knows something to be proud
of. He has gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland was not proud,
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the Death
Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had mastered the
thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-thief alone
near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of a Border mosque and
conducted service in the manner of a Sunni Mollah.

His crowning achievement was spending eleven days as a faquir in the
gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and there picking up the threads of
the great Nasiban Murder Case. But people said, justly enough: "Why on
earth can't Strickland sit in his office and write up his diary, and
recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up the incapacity of his
seniors?" So the Nasiban Murder Case did him no good departmentally;
but, after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his outlandish
custom of prying into native life. By the way, when a man once acquires
a taste for this particular amusement, it abides with him all his days.
It is the most fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where
other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what
he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time,
stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while. He
was a quiet, dark young fellow--spare, black-eyes--and, when he was not
thinking of something else, a very interesting companion. Strickland
on Native Progress as he had seen it was worth hearing. Natives hated
Strickland; but they were afraid of him. He knew too much.

When the Youghals came into the station, Strickland--very gravely, as he
did everything--fell in love with Miss Youghal; and she, after a
while, fell in love with him because she could not understand him. Then
Strickland told the parents; but Mrs. Youghal said she was not going to
throw her daughter into the worst paid Department in the Empire, and old
Youghal said, in so many words, that he mistrusted Strickland's ways
and works, and woul