knife, single-handed against a mob, than ever did lone man before with
cold steel in fair fight."

[6] Native cigarette.

Then it was so. And the Subedar-Major was John Robin Ross-Ellison's
brother!

"He may have been foolishly kind to women, servants and dogs, and of a
foolish type of honour that taketh not every possible advantage of the
foe--but he was very brave, Huzoor, a strong enemy, and when he began he
made an end, and if that same honour were affronted he killed his man.
And yet he did not kill Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper, who surely earned his
death twice, and who tried to kill him in a manner most terrible to
think of. No, he did not--but it shall be told.... And the white woman
prevailed upon our father to make her man-child a Sahib and to let him
go to the _maktab_[7] and _madressah-tul-Islam_[8] at Kot Ghazi, to
learn the clerkly lore that gives no grip to the hand on the sword-hilt
and lance-shaft nor to the thighs in the saddle, no skill to the fingers
on the reins, no length of sight to the eye, no steadiness to the rifle
and the lance, no understanding of the world and men and things. But our
father corrected all this, that the learning might do him no harm, for
oft-times he brought him to Mekran Kot (where my mother tried to poison
him), and he took him across the Black Water and to Kabul and Calcutta
and showed him the world. Also he taught him all he knew of the horse,
the rifle, the sword, and the lance--which was no small matter. Thus,
much of the time wasted at school was harmless, and what the boy lost
through the folly of his mother was redeemed by the wisdom of his
father. Truly are our mothers our best friends and worst enemies. Why,
when I was but a child my mother gave me money and bade me go prove--but