“I don’t mind the man’s intentions,” cried Dick hotly, “if they are founded on an honest opinion. What I do mind is his talking of them to outsiders as if they were accomplished facts, before he has said a word to the men on the spot.”
“Oh, but you forget that the Commissioner’s intentions are as good as accomplished facts, Major,” said Fitz. “‘Is it not already done, Sahib?’ as my old villain of a bearer says when I tell him to do something he has no idea of doing.
“‘For the Khans must come down and Amirs they must frown
When the Kumpsioner Sahib says “Stop”!
(Poor beggars!—we’re here to say “Stop”!)’
aren’t we?” he added dolefully. “Timson says that Burgrave is particularly strong on cutting loose from Nalapur.”
“Oh, do explain these technicalities a little!” pleaded Mabel. Her brother took up the task promptly, seeming to find in it some sort of relief to his feelings.
“I suppose you know that Khemistan has always been governed on a plan of its own? When it was first annexed Georgia’s father was put in charge of this frontier, which was then the wildest, thievingest, most lawless place in creation. He raised the Khemistan Horse, and used them indiscriminately as troops and police. Small parties were stationed all along the frontier, and they were ready to march in any direction, day or night, at the news of a raid or a scrimmage. Within a few years the frontier was quiet, and General Keeling kept it so. He had his own methods of doing it, and the Government didn’t always agree with them, wherefore he ragged the Government, and the Government snubbed him, horribly. However, he held on to his post, and died at it, and then the bad old days began again. That was just before I came up here, and I found that the people looked back to Sinjāj Kīlin’s days as a kind of Golden Age——”
“Oh, Dick, they do still,” cried Mabel. “It makes poor Mr Burgrave so vexed. He told me that whenever an old chief comes to pay his respects, the first thing he asks is always whether the Commissioner Sahib knew Sinjāj Kīlin. He got so tired of it at last that he said he would have given worlds to shout, ‘Thank goodness, no!’”
“Don’t doubt it for a moment. Well, they tried to govern Khemistan on the lines of the province next door, which has always been in the hands of the opposition school. Result—confusion, and all but civil war. Most of St George Keeling’s young men gave up in disgust, and the Amir of Nalapur, just across the frontier, who had been the General’s firm ally, was goaded into enmity. That was the state of things five years ago.”