at all to the red-coated gentleman's liking. To trot behind
his Lord, richly caparisoned and splendidly mounted, was one thing; but
to meet an infernal fellow who deliberately fitted a cartridge into his
carbine to defend his post, was a matter not lightly to be undertaken.
Accordingly he galloped off to fetch his native officer. When this
officer arrived he was much enraged, and roundly abused the sentry,
calling him every name under the sun, and casting the gravest
reflections on the whole of his ancestors, especially on the female
side.

But the sentry stood like a block of wood, and when the other had
finished answered: "I don't know who you are, and don't care; and for
the present you may talk as much as you like, though when I am at
liberty I also shall have a few words to say. But I am sentry here on
this pond, and my orders are such and such, and I mean to obey them. The
first man who tries to force me I hit with a bullet."

"Was there ever such a person?" said the native officer. "He must be
mad! And the Great Lord's horses too! God preserve him; he will
certainly be hanged, or sent across the Black Water for life."

So he too rode off to fetch his sahib; and shortly a trail of dust on
the road showed that he was returning, and not leisurely. The officer
was hot, indignant, and vexed, and said to the sentry: "By my order you
will allow the Viceroy's horses to water at this pond."

"With every respect," replied the sentry, "my own Sahib has given me
other orders, and I mean to obey him."

And nothing the officer could say, and he said a good deal, could move
the sentry one hair'sbreadth from that resolve. So he, in his turn, rode
off to fetch the last court of appeal, the Military Secretary, Lord
William Beresford.

As all who knew him will remember, his Lordship was very short and sharp
when anything occurred that in the least infringed the dignity of the
Viceroy, or of anything belonging to that exalted personage; and
probably few would have cared to be in the shoes of that sentry during
the next few minutes. But the sentry was sublimely oblivious of the
existence of so high an official as a Military Secretary, and only dimly
aware of the existence of a Great Lord. On the other hand his own
Colonel Sahib and his own sahibs, with whom he had fought and bled, were
real live people, whom he knew quite well and whose word was law unto
him. The Military Secretary, therefore, being evidently an older and
mor