accompaniments of
vexatious delay and unfulfilled promises that showed the headmen had no
fear of being taken to task for not making the traveller's way easy.
The Granthi escort required ruling with a rod of iron, for they were
prone, after their usual fashion, to prey upon the people, and it was
no part of Colonel Antony's plan to provide Partab Singh with a
colourable grievance. A few severe examples were necessary before the
half-trained troopers realised that their new commander was in earnest,
but when once the idea had been fixed in their minds that to seize the
property of even the poorest cultivator without payment meant dismissal
in disgrace, they began to take a pride in his very severity.

As for the people of the country, they regarded this new-fangled
behaviour with suspicion at first, as probably a cloak for deeper
designs of plunder on the part of Gerrard himself, but learned
gradually to regard him as well-meaning, though certainly mad. Here
and there a farmer or headman would open his heart to him, letting in
light on many dark places in Partab Singh's administration, while from
the elders who gathered round his tent-door at night when he was
encamped near a village he learned what was the popular estimate of the
ruler himself. One story was told with bated breath again and again,
establishing Partab Singh's character in the minds of his people as a
man of the nicest honour. A few years before, the Rajah had slain with
his own hand every woman and girl in his zenana, as the result of some
discovery, the nature of which no one durst even conjecture, and had
since brought home to his blood-stained halls a young bride of purest
Rajput descent from beyond Nanakpur, who had borne him a son, commonly
reported to be the apple of his eye. There had been an elder son, but
no one knew whether he was alive or dead, though a gruesome tale was
whispered of his father's having ordered his eyes to be torn out. A
faithful foster-brother was said to have sacrificed himself to save
him, and to have died in the prison after his eyes had been duly
exhibited to the Rajah as those of his son, while the prince made his
escape in the servant's clothes, but the truth of this was not vouched
for. Altogether, life seemed to be rather lightly regarded in the
Agpur royal family, though Gerrard gathered that Partab Singh was held
by connoisseurs to have failed to vindicate to the utmost his insulted
honour. If the occasion w