with his
master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley's silly fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles
from their barracks, on the Amritsar road, and ten miles distant from my
house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good
dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad), and
there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he
knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was
going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April,
the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though
he would burst.

"It's amazing," said the officer, "what excuses these invalids of mine
make to get back to barracks. There's a man in my company now asked me
for leave to go back to cantonments to pay a debt he'd forgotten. I
was so taken by the idea I let him go, and he jingled off in an ekka as
pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?"

"If you'll drive me home I think I can show you," I said.

So he went over to my house in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on
the way I told him the story of Garm.

"I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He's the best dog in the
regiment," said my friend. "I offered the little fellow twenty rupees
for him a month ago. But he's a hostage, you say, for Stanley's good
conduct. Stanley's one of the best men I have when he chooses."

"That's the reason why," I said. "A second-rate man wouldn't have taken
things to heart as he has done."

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the
house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk
trees, where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to
sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform
bending over the dog.

"Good-bye, old man," we could not help hearing Stanley's voice. "For
'Eving's sake don't get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can
look after yourself, old man. You don't get drunk an' run about 'ittin'
your friends. You takes your bones an' you eats your biscuit, an' you
kills your enemy like a gentleman. I'm goin' away--don't 'owl--I'm goin'
off to Kasauli, where I won't see you no more."

I could hear him holding Garm's nose as the dog threw it up to the
stars.

"You'll stay here an' be'ave, an'--an' I'll go away an' try to be'ave,
an' I don't know 'ow t