and an influence social, political, and
administrative, co-terminous with the boundaries of the province. Ben,
the Governor, departed to England, where he kept a pack of real dainty
hounds, but never ceased to long for the old lawless lot. His successors
were ex-officio Masters of the Gihon Hunt, as all Inspectors were Whips.
For one reason; Farag, the kennel huntsman, in khaki and puttees, would
obey nothing under the rank of an Excellency, and the hounds would obey
no one but Farag; for another, the best way of estimating crop returns
and revenue was by riding straight to hounds; for a third, though
Judges down the river issued signed and sealed land-titles to all lawful
owners, yet public opinion along the river never held any such title
valid till it had been confirmed, according to precedent, by the
Governor's hunting crop in the hunting field, above the wilfully
neglected earth. True, the ceremony had been cut down to three mere
taps on the shoulder, but Governors who tried to evade that much found
themselves and their office compassed about with a great cloud of
witnesses who took up their time with lawsuits and, worse still,
neglected the puppies. The older sheikhs, indeed, stood out for the
unmeasurable beatings of the old days--the sharper the punishment, they
argued, the surer the title; but here the hand of modern progress was
against them, and they contented themselves with telling tales of Ben
the first Governor, whom they called the Father of Waterwheels, and of
that heroic age when men, horses, and hounds were worth following.

This same Modern Progress which brought dog biscuit and brass water-taps
to the kennels was at work all over the world. Forces, Activities, and
Movements sprang into being, agitated themselves, coalesced, and, in
one political avalanche, overwhelmed a bewildered, and not in the least
intending it, England. The echoes of the New Era were borne into the
Province on the wings of inexplicable cables. The Gihon Hunt read
speeches and sentiments, and policies which amazed them, and they
thanked God, prematurely, that their Province was too far off, too hot,
and too hard worked to be reached by those speakers or their policies.
But they, with others, under-estimated the scope and purpose of the New
Era.

One by one, the Provinces of the Empire were hauled up and baited, hit
and held, lashed under the belly, and forced back on their haunches for
the amusement of their new masters in the