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divine intelligence? For it are a menace or a hindrance was necessary for the good of to the Wise may be removed, the world that the sentry even by force, from their should be removed from your presence." path."

And Ti Yung Seng shed more tears. Then he answered: "Assassination is forbidden by Rule four thousand one hundred and twenty-three A."

The Hermit said inwardly: "O fool absolute and unteachable, and pedant vile beyond the vileness of a dog." And aloud he said: "But Rule nine thousand five hundred and eighty-two teaches us that knaves and vulgar men who

"I have no recollection of any such Rule," answered Ti Yung Seng curtly, for he disliked greatly that other men should venture to quote the Wise Maxims.

"Perhaps this may help you to remember it," said the benevolent and patient Hermit. Then he lifted up his foot, kicked Ti Yung Seng over the edge of the precipice, and went thoughtfully home to tea.

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"MORNING, oh, my merry buzzer. What's the trouble that fetches you out of your downy couch before nine o'clock of a spring morning?"

The staff officer, stretched in luxurious ease upon a sandbag settee built around the stone-and-mud fireplace in the dug-out tent of the 1st Infantry mess at Khaksar camp in Mahsudland, cast his cigarette case over to the signals officer who, slipping down the worn sandbag steps, flopped despondently upon the settee.

"Wire's gone again, Major. Bally blinkin' wire's out again both ways as usual."

He lit a cigarette and relapsed once more into a gloomy silence which the staff officer sympathetically shared.

Derajat column sat about Kaniguram, and save for oocasional sniping, peace lay upon the land. But the Mahsud had developed a fondness for telephone wire, hence this story. Knowing the Mahsud-his childlike habits, his glorious lack of cohesion as regards any system. atic harassing of our L. of C.-one can rule out any idea of Musa Khan's general staff arranging widespread wirecutting on Sinn Fein lines as part of its plan of campaign.

No, the Mahsud presumably annexed wire from sheer joie de vivre, though what he did with it, except possibly tether his animals, Heaven only knows. But for days now the R.E. sergeant - major (who went not out upon repair For many days now the work) gleefully reported half Signal Section at Khaksar an hour after dark: "Up wire camp had led a topsy-turvy out, sir," disappeared, reaplife, spending their days trek- peared fifteen minutes later: king disconsolately up and "Down wire out, sir," and down the river, putting new retired joyfully to bed. The lengths of wire into the tele- wretched linesmen, on the phone cables leading either other hand, retired sleepily way, and their nights sleeping each night, muttering their the sleep of the unemployed. sole adjective, to crawl out Their proper programme in the cold thankless dawn in should have been iddy-umpty- the wake of the picqueting ing messages most of the troops with drums of cable, night, and restfully fishing the returning late each afternoon, pools in the river by day. still blasphemously using the The fighting had died down forceful but threadbare adeven right in front where jeotive.

So when Signals collapsed on the settee with his daily refrain of "bally blinkin' wire's out again," the staff officer was sympathetically silent.

"Can't some one put the kybosh on the beggars?" said the expert eventually.

The staff officer knocked the ashes out of his pipe and dragged himself to his feet.

"Tell you what, old thing, we'll go round to the 'Baggy Breeches' and get them to try their luck with a chupao. You can put 'em up to some likely spots."

"Somewhat!" quoth the blue-and-white banded one bitterly, but without enthusiasm. "But it's sure to be another bally dud. Every one's tried the 'chupao' stunt and got nothing except pneumonia, so far. Can't you burn a village, or something pleasing like that?"

"Village-burning's off at the moment. The authorities are dangling peace-baits. But a well-laid chupao might catch something. Anyway, we'll have another shot."

They walked across the camp to the mess of the Baggy Breeches," officially known as the 51st Bombay Foot, a newly- arrived unit thirsting for Mahsud blood. The C.O., enjoying a leisurely late breakfast, greeted them cheerfully, and listened to their tale of woe.

"My idea, sir," concluded the staff officer, "is that some of your fire-eating youngsters might like to lay a chupao."

The C.O., an enthusiast, leapt at it and shouted for

his adjutant, who, muffled in fur-collared British warm and Gilgit boots, appeared, rabbitlike, from the office tent. "Send for young Greene," said the Colonel. "I've got a job for him."

Greene appeared, and for the third time that morning Signals told his tale.

"And what I want you to do," said the C.O. at the end of it, "is to take a dozen of your men and sit up. Being a shikari, you may get something."

Despondent noises from the signaller were interpreted to mean that needle-hunting in haystacks was more lucrative, but the Baggy Breeches were nothing if not optimistic; so he indicated various likely places.

Later in the morning Greene, with two of his out-throats and a fishing-rod, departed downstream. He fished many pools over a long length, but for a keen fisherman his methods were careless. His bag, to be precise, was nil-not surprising, since his gaze was never upon the water, and he spent quite a long time fishing a most unlikely run under 8 collection of small trees at the edge of a banked-up field.

Anybody casually wandering about the Baggy Breeches lines that evening, had they been observant, might have seen one or two unusual sights, Item, groups of two or three men swathing their bayonets in strips of thin khaki; item, Greene and an Indian officer breaking whole volumes of King's Regulations by pasting strips of white paper between

the sights of a score of rifles; item, certain men in very much undress practising orawling quietly over a heap of stones. Next morning, when the linesmen were out repairing for the nth time, Greene, accompanied by an Indian officer and a havildar, both conspicuously lacking the trappings and adornments of their rank, fished that same run again with equal illsuccess. During the morning came a party of men with tools, en route for a picquet on the opposite bank. One of the mules-strange to say, a peculiarly dooile one as a rule-took vast fright at the group of fishers, shedding most of his his saddlery and load round about; and it took that party over an hour to collect their stuff and move on again, which also was strange, for the Baggy Breeches pride themselves on the discipline and quickness of their working parties.

Later it transpired that it was ration and water day for the same picquet, and another party passed by. Evidently a blight was upon the Baggy Breeches this morning, since, as they started up the farther bank with their strings of laden mules, a flour - sack burst, and the sudden loss of weight that side caused the badly-girthed saddle to slip round. The full sack on the opposite side, slipping between the mule's legs, caused it to kick the mule behind, who retaliated, thus producing shortly a complete mess-up of mules

on the hillside. It was a long delay ere they got going again, and fortunate indeed was it that no Generals were about.

Still later, the afternoon relief of the working party came along, and with them came a party of twenty men carrying their bedding, from which the most unintelligent observer could gather that the picquet was being relieved. Altogether there was a good deal of to-and-fro movement, and it was late in the afternoon ere the last of the parties had returned into camp. I regret to say that march discipline was poor, and the Baggy Breeches moved in endless groups of fives and sixes, straggling hither and thither, and at one time there must have been as many as forty dotting the river-bank.

The staff officer, sitting on the edge of the camp, watched the scene for some time and showed a strange disregard of duty in not writing a "stinker" to the Baggy Breeches on their lack of soldierly behaviour. On the contrary, he appeared rather to enjoy the display, and when a longlegged, fair-skinned young Pathan sepoy came up the hill carrying Greene's fishing-rod with-disgraceful to sayGreene's helmet upon his head, and a most obvious mimicry of Greene's walk and manner, followed at respectful distance by two grinning armed orderlies, he lay back on his pile of sandbags and chuckled instead of reproving the jester.

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Night had fallen some time light had dissipated the faint back, and bush and rook and mist in the river bed, had tree showed ghostly in the taken up their position. Rediffused moonlit mist which mained, therefore, to be seen hung about the river bed whether the enemy's mathebetween the shadowy hills. A matical limitations and the few pinpricks of lights and value of those brief minutes smudgy blurs of cooking fires of half light had been correctly marked the camp perched on estimated. the precipitous cliff face, while up and down stream an occasional twinkling signal-lamp marked the position of a pioquet. Save for the faintest splash of the fast-running water of the streams front, a dead silence hung over all.

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Crouched behind a low bank of earth, Greene, ouddling his rifle, peered out across the stream to where, barely visible even in the bright moonlight, a great break in the hills flank ing the river marked the entrance of a nullah which served as a Mahsud highway. Beside him orouched his orderly, a shot of no mean repute, and to left and right in the shadows of the trees that fringed the bank you could make out, if you knew where to look, odd figures pressed into folds of the ground or against the ghostly trunk of the willows. But even from Greene's vantagepoint you would only have seen them had you known they were there, so still did they lie.

The pantomime was conoluded, and out of the 150 men who had been moving about over the ground all day, fifteen had remained hidden; and in the witching hour of dusk, when the daylight had faded, and ere yet the moon

The light grew stronger as the moon's full circle swung up higher above the dark jagged hills, and rock and stone and black glinting water showed in sharp contrast to the intense shadows of velvety black under the bank and trees. The old shikari instinot woke in Greene's mind as he played with the safety cat of of his rifle, and memory after memory of similar waits came into his thoughts. But this was far bigger game than ever before, more cunning, more dangerous; and a funny little thrill played up and down his back as he thought of the possibilities if the enemy had spotted the game and decided to hunt the hunters.

An hour passed like an eternity, and the river-bed remained void of life. Time and again he and the watching men around him craned their gaze into the shadows ahead, now concentrating on men's heads newly showing behind a rook, now on crouching figures that alike proved five minutes later to be but yet more queer - shaped thrown into sharp relief by the ever-changing light.

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Once again the subaltern bent his gaze down stream, and as he did so felt his heart hammer in his throat and a

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