especially in a European winter, and the colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation.  A kind of guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans.  The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere.  At last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a concession of three inches.  He had ordered the ship’s carpenter to fix a three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar.  And now it was shut.  “Why is this?” he expostulated.  For answer they pointed to the hook.  “Sahib, the hook will not fasten!”

The colonel examined it; it was upside down.  The contumacious Pathans had quietly reversed the work of the ship’s carpenter, and the hook was now useless without being ornamental.  With bland ingenuous faces they stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent craftsmanship.  The Field-Marshal smiled—­he knew the Pathan of old; the colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents.

“Whence come you?” said the Field-Marshal.

“From Tirah, Sahib.”

“Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah.  But all that is now past.  Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with you.”

“Ah!  Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind.”

“And wherefore?”

“My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and abducted our women-folk.  I would fain have leave to go on furlough and lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him.  Then would I return to France.”

“Patience!  That can wait.  How like you the War?”

“Burra Achha Tamasha,[1] Sahib.  But we like not their big guns.  We would fain come at them with the bayonet.  Why are we kept back in the trenches, Sahib?”

“Peace!  It shall come in good time.”

They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers.  A tall Sikh rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted.

“What is your name?”

“H——­ Sing, Sahib.”

“There was a H——­ Sing with me in ’78,” said the Field-Marshal meditatively.  “With the Kuram Field Force.  He was my orderly.  He served me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar.”

The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet gleamed.  “Even so, Sahib, he was my father.”

“Good! he was a man.  Be worthy of him.  And you too are a subadar?”

“Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King’s salt these twelve years.”

“That is well.  Have you children?”

“Yea, Sahib, God has been very good.”

“And your lady mother, is she alive?”

“The Lord be praised, she liveth.”

“And how is your ’family’?”

“She is well, Sahib.”

“And how like you this War?”