Told in the East | Page 5

tree where the goat had bleated, the Punjabi skin-buyer rose
up, took one long look at the fakir and ran.
"Well, I'll be!" exclaimed the sentry.
"You'll be worse than that," said Brown, "if you use that language
anywhere where I'm about! I'll not have it, d'you hear? Get on ahead,
and open the door of the clink!"
The sentry obeyed him, and a moment later the fakir was thrust into a
four-square mud-walled room, and the door was locked on him.
"Back to your post," commanded Brown. "And next time I hear you
swearing, I'll treat you to a double-trick, my man! About turn. Quick
march."
The sentry trudged off without daring to answer him, and Brown took a
good look at the fakir through the iron bars that protected the top half
of the door. Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly
slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee. His soul revolted
at the thought of it, but it was his duty to eat it and set an example to
the men; and duty was the only thing that mattered in Bill Brown's
scheme of things.
"Maybe it's true," he muttered, "and maybe it's all lies; there's no
knowing. Maybe India's going to run blood, as these fakirs seem to
think, and maybe it isn't. There'll be more blood shed than mine in that
case! `Hookum hai'--`It is orders,' heh ? Well--there's more than one
sort of `Hookum hai!' I've got my orders too!"
He doubled the guard, when supper bad been eaten and the guardroom

had been swept and the pots and kettle had been burnished until they
shone. Then he tossed a chupatty to the imprisoned fakir, spat again
from sheer disgust, lit his pipe and went and sat where he could hear
the footbeats of the sentries.
"They can't help their religion," he muttered. "The poor infidels don't
know no better. And they've got a right to think what they please `about
me or the Company. But I've no patience with uncleanliness! That's
wrong any way you look at it. That critter can't see straight for the dirt
on him, nor think straight for that matter. He's a disgrace to humanity.
Priest or fakir or whatever he is, if I live to see tomorrow's sun I'll hand
him over to the guard and have him washed!"
Having formed that resolution, Brown dismissed all thoughts of the
fakir. His memory went back to home--the clean white cottage on the
Sussex Downs, and the clean white girl who once on a time had waited
for him there. For the next few hours, until the guard was changed, the
only signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the
steady footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the
hell-hot guard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly
discomfort.

II.
Bill Brown, with his twelve, had not been set to watch a lonely
crossroad for the fun of it. One road was a well-made highway, and led
from a walled city, where three thousand men sweated and thought of
England, to another city, where five thousand armed natives drew
England's pay, and wore English uniforms.
The other road was a snake-like trail, nearly as wide but not nearly so
well kept. It twisted here and there amid countless swarming native
villages, and was used almost exclusively by natives, whose rightful
business was neither war nor peace nor the contriving of either of them.
It had been a trade-road when history was being born, and the laden
ox-carts creaked along it still, as they had always done and always will
do until India awakes.
But there are few men in the world who attend to nothing but their
rightful business, and there are even more in India than elsewhere who
are prone to neglect their own affairs and stir up sedition among others.
There are few fighting-men among that host. They are priests for the

most part or fakirs or make-believe pedlers or confessed and shameless
mendicants; and they have no liking for the trunk roads, where the
tangible evidence of Might and Majesty may be seen marching in
eight-hundred-man battalions. They prefer to dream along the byways,
and set other people dreaming. They lead, when the crash comes, from
behind.
Though the men who made the policies of the Honorable East India
Company were mostly blind to the moving finger on the wall, and
chose to imagine themselves secure against a rising of the millions they
controlled; and though most of their military officers were blinder yet,
and failed to read the temper of the native troops in their immediate
command, still, there were other men who found themselves groping, at
least two years before the Mutiny of '57. They were groping for