“Back to your post,” commanded Brown.  “And next time I hear you swearing, I’ll treat you to a double-trick, my man!  About turn.  Quick march.”

The sentry trudged off without daring to answer him, and Brown took a good look at the fakir through the iron bars that protected the top half of the door.  Then he went off to see about his supper, of newly slaughtered goat-chops and chupatties baked in ghee.  His soul revolted at the thought of it, but it was his duty to eat it and set an example to the men; and duty was the only thing that mattered in Bill Brown’s scheme of things.

“Maybe it’s true,” he muttered, “and maybe it’s all lies; there’s no knowing.  Maybe India’s going to run blood, as these fakirs seem to think, and maybe it isn’t.  There’ll be more blood shed than mine in that case! `Hookum hai’—­`It is orders,’ heh ?  Well—­there’s more than one sort of `Hookum hai!’ I’ve got my orders too!”

He doubled the guard, when supper bad been eaten and the guardroom had been swept and the pots and kettle had been burnished until they shone.  Then he tossed a chupatty to the imprisoned fakir, spat again from sheer disgust, lit his pipe and went and sat where he could hear the footbeats of the sentries.

“They can’t help their religion,” he muttered.  “The poor infidels don’t know no better.  And they’ve got a right to think what they please `about me or the Company.  But I’ve no patience with uncleanliness!  That’s wrong any way you look at it.  That critter can’t see straight for the dirt on him, nor think straight for that matter.  He’s a disgrace to humanity.  Priest or fakir or whatever he is, if I live to see tomorrow’s sun I’ll hand him over to the guard and have him washed!”

Having formed that resolution, Brown dismissed all thoughts of the fakir.  His memory went back to home—­the clean white cottage on the Sussex Downs, and the clean white girl who once on a time had waited for him there.  For the next few hours, until the guard was changed, the only signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown’s pipe, the steady footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the hell-hot guard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly discomfort.

II.

Bill Brown, with his twelve, had not been set to watch a lonely crossroad for the fun of it.  One road was a well-made highway, and led from a walled city, where three thousand men sweated and thought of England, to another city, where five thousand armed natives drew England’s pay, and wore English uniforms.

The other road was a snake-like trail, nearly as wide but not nearly so well kept.  It twisted here and there amid countless swarming native villages, and was used almost exclusively by natives, whose rightful business was neither war nor peace nor the contriving of either of them.  It had been a trade-road when history was being born, and the laden ox-carts creaked along it still, as they had always done and always will do until India awakes.