“Yes, sir!  He’s the same man who spoke in the powder-magazine;” ’

“Do you confirm that?” he asked Brown.

“Under favor, sir, my men must be somewhere, if they’re not all killed.  They’ll recognize me.  And there’s the other lot I led all last night and all today.  They’ll tell you where they found me!”

“Never mind!  I’ve decided I believe you!  D’you realize that you’re something of a marvel?”

“No, sir—­except that I’ve had marvelous luck!”

“Well, I shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in despatches.  It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen!  There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what you dared in the first place.  But, more than that, there are even fewer men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else’s care while they blew up a powder-magazine with themselves on top of it, in order to make a breach for the army to come in by!  My right hand’s out of action unfortunately—­you’ll have to shake my left!”

The colonel rose, held his uninjured hand out and Brown shook it, since he was ordered to.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to have shaken hands with you, Sergeant Brown!” said Colonel Kendrick.

“Thank you, sir!” said Brown, taking one step back, and then saluting.  “May I join my regiment, sir?”

He joined his regiment, when he had helped to sort out the bleeding remnants of it from among the by-ways and back alleys of Jailpore.  And the chaplain married him and Jane Emmett out of hand.  He sent her off at once with her former mistress to the coast, and marched off with his regiment to Delphi.  And at Delphi his name was once more mentioned in despatches.

When the Mutiny was over, and the country had settled down again to peace and reincarnation of a nation had begun, Brown found himself hoisted to a civil appointment that was greater and more highly paid than anything his modest soul had ever dreamed of.

He never understood the reason for it, although he did his fighting-best consistently to fill the job; and he never understood why Queen Victoria should have taken the trouble to write a letter to him in which she thanked him personally, nor why they should have singled out for praise and special notice a fellow who had merely done his duty.

Perhaps that was the reason why he was such a conspicuous success in civil life.  They still talk of how Bill Brown, with Jane his wife and Juggut Khan the Rajput to advise him, was Resident Political Adviser to a Maharajah, and of how the Maharajah loathed him, and looked sidewise at him—­but obeyed.  That, though, is not a war-story.  It is a story of the saving of a war, and shall go on record, some day, beneath a title of its own.

For The Salt He Had Eaten

Prologue