fifteen-stone burden, with neither food nor water, and survived!). A
good mare, sahib--indeed a mare of mares--fit for thy father's son.
That mare I give thee. It is little, sahib, but my best; I am a poor
man. The other six I bought--there is the account. I bought them
cheaply, paying less than half the price demanded in each case--but I
had to borrow and must pay back."

Young Cunningham was hard put to it to keep his voice steady as he
answered. This man was a stranger to him. He had a hazy recollection
of a dozen or more bearded giants who formed a moving background to his
dreams of infancy, and he had expected some sort of welcome from one or
two perhaps, of his father's men when he reached the north. But to
have men borrow money that they might serve him, and have horses ready
for him, and to be met like this at the gate of India by a man who
admitted he was poor, was a little more than his self-control had been
trained as yet to stand.

"I won't waste words, Mahommed Gunga," he said, half-choking. "I'll--
er--I'll try to prove how I feel about it."

"Ha! How said I? Thy father's son, I said! He, too, was no believer
in much promising! I was his servant, and will serve him still by
serving thee. The honor is mine, sahib, and the advantage shall be
where thy father wished it."

"My father would never have had me--"

"Sahib, forgive the interruption, but a mistake is better checked. Thy
father would have flung thee ungrudged, into a hell of bayonets, me,
too, and would have followed after, if by so doing he could have served