DER AND THE NEW.

In little more than a week after the ball, Charteris and Gerrard had
shaken from their feet the dust of Ranjitgarh with its Occidental
influences, and were journeying, though westward, towards the pure
unadulterated East in their respective districts. Charteris' sphere of
influence was reached first, a land of prevailing sand-colour with
oases of almost painful green, over which the Granthi sovereignty had
never been more than merely nominal. A Granthi army had made periodic
inroads into Darwan, sweeping off all the cattle it could find, by way
of collecting the revenue, and the Darwanis retorted by incursions
across the Granthi border, designed to assert their independence.
Charteris was at the head of a strong force of Granthis, to emphasize
the fact that he represented the Ranjitgarh Durbar, not the British
Crown nor the Company, and his duties were extensive, if simple. He
was to bring down the oppressor and relieve the oppressed, destroy the
towers of robber chiefs and induce the occupants to turn their
unaccustomed hands to honest labour, establish order in place of
confusion, and generally to make it known and felt that there now
existed, and must be obeyed, a law superior to the sweet will of the
strongest.

Gerrard, passing on towards the south-west, would be faced with quite a
different problem, in the solution of which the velvet glove would play
a more important part, ostensibly at least, than the iron hand. The
province of Agpur formed an indisputable part of the Granthi dominions,
but it was ruled by a feudatory prince, who was faithful to his
obligations during the lifetime of the great conqueror Ajit Singh,
under whose banners he had often ridden to victory, but had seen his
opportunity in the feeble rule of Ajit Singh's successors. One
concession after another had been wrung by his diplomacy from the hands
of weakling or child, the right to raise troops in his own name, to
fortify the city of Agpur, and--though this was still contested by
certain Ranjitgarh stalwarts--the power of nominating his successor
instead of merely recommending his eldest son to the favour of his
suzerain. Only a very few steps, a distance that might be bridged by a
single resolute advance, had separated Partab Singh from the dignity of
a full-blown independent prince, when the nerveless hands of the
Ranjitgarh ruler were suddenly reinforced by the strong grasp of a
British Resident upon the reins. For