himself lean enough to run. If he cannot do this, I propose to find
someone who can. Once he comes to a clear understanding of this
treaty, and especially of its last clause, he will give little
trouble. As some atonement for worrying you so much about the
accoutrements, the Ghorawalla is very careful not to disturb you
about the horse. If the saddle galls it, or its hoof cracks, he
suppresses the fact, and experiments upon the ailment with his own
"vernacular medicines," as the Baboo called them. When these fail,
and the case is almost past cure, he mentions it casually, as an
unfortunate circumstance which has come to his notice. There are a
few things, only a few, which make me feel homicidal, and this is one
of them.

I cannot find the bright side of the syce: perhaps I am not in a
humour to see it. Looking back down a long avenue of Gunnoos,
Tookarams, Raghoos, Mahadoos and others whose names even have grown
dim, I discern only a monotony of provocation. The fine figure of
old Bindaram stands out as an exception, but then he was a coachman,
and the coachman is to the Ghorawalla, what cream is to skim milk.
The unmitigated Ghorawalla is a sore disease, one of those forms of
suffering which raise the question whether our modern civilization is
anything but a great spider, spinning a web of wants and their
accompanying worries over the world and entangling us all, that it
may suck our life-blood out. In justice I will admit that, as a
runner, the thoroughbred Mahratta Ghorawalla has no peer in the
animal kingdom. A sporting friend and I once engaged in a steeple-
chase with two of them. I was mounted on a great Cape horse, my
friend on a wiry countrybred, and the men on their own proper legs,
curious looking limbs without any flesh on them, only shiny black
leather stretched over bones. The goal was bakshees, twelve miles