They looked into my eyes and laughed,-- But, what when I was gone?
Have strong men made me one of them?
Or do I ride alone?
ON the morning after Mahommed Gunga's daring experiment with Cunningham's nervous system he was anxious to say the least of it; and that is only another way of saying that he was irritable.

He watched the Englishman at breakfast, on the dak-bungalow veranda, with a sideways restless glance that gave the lie a dozen times over to his assumed air of irascible authority.
"We will see now what we will see," he muttered to himself.

"These who know such a lot imagine that the test is made.

They forget that there be many brave men of whom but a few are fit to lead.

Now--now--we will see!" And he kept on repeating that assurance to himself, with the air of a man who would like to be assured, but is not, while he ostentatiously found fault with every single thing on which his eyes lit.
"One would think that the Risaldar-sahib were afraid of consequences!" whispered the youngest of his followers, stung to the quick by a quite unmerited rebuke.