n English-Urdu. The Thakur withdrew his head,
and from certain grunts that followed seemed to be wakening his
retainers. Then two men fell sleepily out of the tonga and walked into
the night. "Come in," said the Thakur, "you and your baggage. My pistol
is in that corner; be careful." The Englishman, taking a mail-bag in one
hand for safety's sake,--the wilderness inspires an Anglo-Indian
Cockney, with unreasoning fear,--climbed into the tonga, which was then
loaded far beyond Plimsoll mark, and the procession resumed its journey.
Every one in the vehicle--it seemed as full as the railway carriage that
held Alice through the Looking-Glass--was _Sahib_ and _Hazur_. Except
the Englishman. He was simple _tum_ (thou), and a revolver, Army
pattern, was printing every diamond in the chequer-work of its handle,
on his right hip. When men desired him to move, they prodded him with
the handles of _tulwars_ till they had coiled him into an uneasy lump.
Then they slept upon him, or cannoned against him as the tonga bumped.
It was an _aram_ tonga, a tonga for ease. That was the bitterest thought
of all!

In due season the harness began to break once every five minutes, and
the driver vowed that the wheels would give way also.

After eight hours in one position, it is excessively difficult to walk,
still more difficult to climb up an unknown road into a dak-bungalow;
but he who has sought sleep on an arsenal and under the bodies of burly
Rajputs can do it. The grey dawn brought Udaipur and a French bedstead.
As the tonga jingled away, the Englishman heard the familiar crack of
broken harness. So he was not the Jonah he had been taught to consider
himself all through that night of penance!

A jackal sat in the verandah and howled him to sleep, and he dreamed
that he caught a Viceroy under the walls of Chitor and beat him with a
_tulwar_ till he turned into a dak-pony whose near foreleg was
perpetually coming off and who would say nothing but _tum_ when he was
asked why he had not built a railway from Chitor to Udaipur.

VII

TOUCHING THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN AND THEIR CITY, AND THE HAT-MARKED
CASTE AND THEIR MERITS, AND A GOOD MAN'S WORKS IN THE WILDERNESS.

It was worth a night's discomfort and revolver-beds to sleep upon--this
city of the Suryavansi, hidden among the hills that encompass the great
Pichola lake. Truly, the King who governs to-day is wise in his
determination to have no railroad to his capital. His predec