s superiority, and more than careful to praise on all
occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be
admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived
in their station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every
single man at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she
explained that they were all so nice that unless she could marry them
all, including the Colonel and some majors already married, she was
not going to content herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a
little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature contradictious; and
the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their arms, but
compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining the
aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior
subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.

The only person who did not share the general regard for the White
Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
across the border, and answered to the name of Paythan. They had once
met the regiment officially and for something less than twenty
minutes, but the interview, which was complicated with many
casualties, had filled them with prejudice. They even called the White
Hussars children of the devil and sons of persons whom it would be
perfectly impossible to meet in decent society. Yet they were not
above making their aversion fill their money-belts. The regiment
possessed carbines--beautiful Martini-Henri carbines that would lop a
bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even
handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were coveted all along the
border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply, they were supplied
at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight in coined
silver--seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or sixteen pounds
sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at night by
snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose of
the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and
in the hot weather when all the barrack doors and windows were open,
they vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired
them for family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold
nights of the northern Indian winter they were st