“You’ll explain to Charlie and the others, won’t you? I don’t like to. There’s a good fellow!”
“I’m rather glad it’s turned out this way, young ’un,” said the elder. “I knew you were plucky enough before, now I know you’re something better.”
“I say, Jim,” Ted blurted out after a few moments’ silence, “suppose Tynan’s been done the same way?”
“Done? What way?” asked the slower Jim.
“I mean that perhaps someone began praising him for something he’d never done, and didn’t give him a chance to put it right at once, and then he stuck to it for fear that people would blame him for not denying it straight off. If it has happened that way I’m sorry for him, for he’ll be jolly miserable.”
“It’s hardly likely,” said Jim.
Outside the dying man’s tent a few fierce tribesmen from Hazara and wild cut-throats from Bannu (in these two provinces Nicholson had been commissioner) had collected from the various Punjab regiments, and were loudly lamenting the supposed death of their idol.
“Jan Nikkulseyn is dead! The great sahib is no more!” they wailed, as Ensign Russell appeared before them.
“Tell us, huzoor[1]” a veteran native officer eagerly demanded, “is he indeed dead?”