Because of their disloyalty, and the ever-present danger that they were, the biggest British garrison in India had to be kept cooped up in Peshawur, to rot with fever and ague and the other ninety Indian plagues.

He wanted to see that garrison again, and estimate it, and make up his mind what exactly, or probably, the garrison would do in the event of the rebellion blazing out.  And he wanted to try once more to warn some one in authority, and make him see the smouldering fire beneath the outer covering of sullen silence.

He received thanks for the letters.  He received an invitation to take tea on the veranda of an officer so high in the British service that many a staff major would have given a month’s pay for a like opportunity.  But he was laughed at for the advice he had to give.

“Mahommed Gunga, you’re like me, you’re getting old!” said the high official.

“Not so very old, sahib.  I was a young man when Cunnigan-bahadur raised a regiment and licked the half of Rajputana into shape with it.  Not too old, sahib, to wish there were another Cunnigan to ride with!”

“Well, Mahommed Gunga, you’re closer to your wish than you suppose!  Young Cunningham’s gazetted, and probably just about starting on his way out here via the Cape of Good Hope.  He should be here in three or four months at the outside.”

“You mean that, sahib?”

“Wish I didn’t!  The puppy will arrive here with altogether swollen notions of his own importance and what is due his father’s son.  He’s been captain of his college at home, and that won’t lessen his sense of self-esteem either.  I can foresee trouble with that boy!”

“Sahib, there is a service I could render!”

The Rajput spoke with a strangely constrained voice all of a sudden, but the Commissioner did not notice it; he was too busy pulling on a wool-lined jacket to ward off the evening chill.

“Well, risaldar—­what then?”

“I think that I could teach the son of Cunnigan-bahadur to be worth his salt.”

“If you’ll teach him to be properly respectful to his betters I’ll be grateful to you, Mahommed Gunga.”

“Then, sahib, I shall have certain license allowed me in the matter?”

“Do anything you like, in reason, risaldar!  Only keep the pup from cutting his eye-teeth on his seniors’ convenience, that’s all!”

Mahommed Gunga wasted no time after that on talking, nor did he wait to specify the nature of the latitude he would expect to be allowed him; he knew better.  And he knew now that the one chance that he sought had been given him.

Like all observant natives, he was perfectly aware that the British weakness mostly lay in the age of the senior officers and the slowness of promotion.  There were majors of over fifty years of age, and if a man were a general at seventy he was considered fortunate and young.  The jealousy with which younger men were regarded would have been humorous had it not come already so near to plunging India into anarchy.