from sunrise until sunset, to be displaced by whoever dared to do
it, at his peril.

They had no clock. They had nothing, except the uniforms and arms
of the Honorable East India Company, as issued in this year of Our
Lord, 1857--a cooking-pot or two, a kettle, a little money and a
butcher-knife. Their supper bleated miserably some twenty yards away,
tied to a tree, and a lean. Punjabi squatted near it in readiness
to buy the skin. It was a big goat, but it was mangy, so he held
only two annas in his hand. The other anna (in case that Brown should
prove adamant) was twisted in the folds of his pugree, but he was
prepared to perjure himself a dozen times, and take the names of
all his female ancestors in vain, before he produced it.

The sun flattened a little more at the bottom, and began to move
quickly, as it does in India--anxious apparently to get away from
the day's ill deeds.

"Shoulder umms!" commanded Brown. "General salute! Present-umms!"

The red sun slid below the sky-line, and the night was on them, as
though somebody had shut the lid. Brown stepped to the sword, jerked
it out of the ground and returned it to his scabbard in three motions.

"Shoulder-umms! Order-umms! Dismiss!" The men filed back into the
hut again, disconsolately, without swearing and without mirth. They
had put the sun to bed with proper military decency. They would have
seen humor--perhaps--or an excuse for blasphemy in the omission of
such a detail, but it was much too hot to swear at the execution of it.