adventurous career cast a spell over us, making us almost wish that the end of the bold highlander could be other than a shameful death on the gallows.

At last, one evening, the orders arrived for Sikandar to be marched under strong escort to the headquarters station of the district to stand his trial. All the necessary preparations were made for an early start on the morrow. On the whole, we were relieved to think that our responsibilities with regard to so valuable a prisoner were nearly at an end, though these feelings were not entirely untinged with a somewhat illogical regret.

· That last night of Sikandar's sojourn amongst us was hotter than usual. Not a breath of air stirred, and the mud walls of the fort seemed almost to glow with heat after the sun had set. We all slept sub Iove. The guard, as usual, had the prisoner tied into his bed, which was placed within a circle of others occupied by the sentries' reliefs. The havildar of the guard slept on the bed next to that of Sikandar. The guard consisted, as was the custom, of a mixture of Afridis and Sikhs. It is thus that the maxim divide et impera receives practical interpretation in the Indian Army. Sikh and Pathan, Dogra and Punjabi Mahomedan, stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to repel the King's enemies, but equally prepared to drive bayonets into each other at His Majesty's command,-for oil and water will commingle sooner than Hindoo and Mahomedan will love one another or share one another's ambitions, be these political, social, or professional.

The commander of the guard that night was Dilawar Khan, a havildar of the Afridi company. He was a striking-looking man, with a fair complexion and blue eyes, a handsome nose and a long flaxen beard of which he was extremely proud. In European garb he would have passed for a splen

did Saxon. Many years of gallant service stood to Dilawar's credit, and the day was not far off when the three stripes on his arm were bound to be replaced by the stars of the Jemadar, or native subaltern, on his shoulders, for it had practically been decided that he should fill the next vacancy in the commissioned ranks of the Afridi company. But, alas for human hopes! Dilawar fell a victim to Sikandar-the last that the outlaw could claim.

Had he remained amongst the mountains of Tirah instead of entering the service of Government, Dilawar would undoubtedly have become a mullah. He would have preached jehad for the glory of Allah and his Prophet. He might even have turned ghazi himself, and crowned death with martyrdom. For the fires of his faith burned fiercely within him, and it was only the iron will of the man that kept them under restraint. For an Afridi he was well educated. He had sat at the feet of a mullah of great repute when a youth, and from him had imbibed education and enthusiasm for the faith. A family quarrel, however, changed the current of his life, and the hotheaded youth forsook home, kindred, and master, and took service under the banner of the Great Sirkar. His conspicuous ability, dash, and the influence he exerted over his comrades, soon marked him for promotion, and he rapidly ascended the ladder till the topmost rungs were practically in his grasp.

On this eventful night Dilawar came face to face with the second crisis of his life, and this time he was called upon to choose between his faith and his duty. On the one side the life of a fellow Moslem lay in the hollow of his hand; on the other was loyalty to the Government whose salt he ate. One path led to a blissful hereafter; the other to wealth, honor, and all that a soldier holds dear on earth. The

strenuous piety of the wily Sikandar had raked up the smouldering fires within Dilawar, and it needed but that last whispered appeal from the doomed man to his fellow Mahomedan, as they lay side by side in the still, dark night. to fan the embers into flame. But if Dilawar was a zealous Moslem, he was also a Pathan, and a desire to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds is a weakness with every Pathan. So Dilawar decided upon a compromise. He would acquire merit by rescuing a true Believer, but, at the same time, he would contrive that appearances would in no way jeopardize his credit with the Infidel. It was the will of Allah that he should be on guard this night, and, if the prisoner escaped, that too would be the will of the All Merciful.

Silence lay over the fort, broken only by the monotonous tread of the sentries as they measured their beats along the walls. There was no moon, but the night was clear and starlit. The white-sheeted beds of the sleeping garrison stood about in clusters in all directions, and gave the courtyard of the fort the appearance of a badly arranged graveyard.

Suddenly a shot rang out, accompanied by a piercing yell. A second shot followed immediately after. In an instant every bed was empty, and the men who slept with their rifles buckled to their wrists, were doubling to their alarm-posts. The guard had already stood to arms, and Dilawar, a smoking rifle in his hand, was making towards one of the sentries on the wall. The senfry was leaning over the parapet peering down into the darkness below.

There was no need to ask what had happened. Sikandar's bed was empty, and the rope with which he had been bound lay beside it. The Commandant at once joined Dilawar and the sentry who had fired. Gunga Singh, the Sikh.

The man was His story ran

that he had seen a white figure make a sudden dash from amongst the beds of the guard, climb on to the wall, and leap over. He fired just as the fugitive balanced himself for an instant on the crest of the parapet, and he felt sure he had hit him. The second shot seemed to him to come from the direction of the guard. Here Dilawar interrupted the speaker, and explained that, awakened by the sentry's shot and at once realizing what had happened, he fired his rifle to give the alarm.

Without delay a party of men hurried out to search for the escaped prisoner. They had not far to look. Sikandar lay dead close under the parapet, shot through the back. He had cheated the gallows after all.

Again the telegraph instruments were set a-ticking, and the news of Sikandar's death was known from Harai to Peshawar before the sun was over the hills.

There followed the inevitable Court of Inquiry, the military Coroner's Inquest which deals with all the accidents which can befall the soldier, from the loss of his boots to the loss of his life. After the usual amount of browbeating and cross-questioning on the part of the court, and the customary contradictions, subterfuges, and prevarications on the part of the native witnesses, Havildar Dilawar Khan was deprived of his belt and side-arms and was placed under close arrest. Then came the court-martial, and the truth, or rather, as much thereof as was necessary to convict Dilawar of permitting, if not aiding and abetting, the escape of a prisoner confided to his care, was dragged out of the witnesses. For it would indeed be rash to suppose that any judicial inquiry in India, be it ever so skilfully conducted, can be expected to elicit the whole truth.

In due course the finding and sen

tence of the court were confirmed, and, with military promptitude, promulgated at a parade of the whole garrison. Dilawar was the central figure, and the cup of bitterness was surely filled to overflowing when the drummajor of the regiment, a Sikh, advanced towards the unhappy man and pulled the stripes from his arm, removed the regimental badges from his shoulders, and cut off the buttons of his jacket. Next day the regiment knew Dilawar Khan no more.

But sometimes "the evil that men do lives after them"; and so it was with Dilawar. As far as the regiment was concerned he no longer lived; but he had left behind him, amongst his intimate friends and admirers in the Afridi Company, as a legacy, a burning desire to square accounts with the young Sikh whom in their childish and vindictive unreason these hot-headed partisans blamed for the downfall of their hero. That an unbelieving dog of a Sikh should have killed a gallantalbeit outlawed-Pathan was bad enough; but that he should, further, have been instrumental in bringing ignominy and ruin upon another Pathan who (and here the shoe pinched hard) was shortly to become their patron and a source of many good things-including promotion and unlimited leavewas more than flesh and blood could endure. If only they could have smuggled that Sikh across the border in to Yagistan, how simply and even pleasantly the whole affair could have been adjusted! But, alas! in the woefully law-inflicted realms of the Sirkar cumbrously slow and laborious methods would have to be employed, and even then the satisfaction to be derived would probably be more than doubtful.

However, days, weeks, and months passed without anything happening to disturb the even tenor of our lives. Sikandar's death had given the frontier

His merry

peace for the time being. men, bereft of their chief, dispersed to their homes amongst the mountains, and, no doubt lived luxuriously on the fruits of more strenuous days. The stirring events connected with the capture and attempted escape had ceased to be the all-absorbing topic of conversation in the fort, and our minds began to be occupied with alternate hopes and fears regarding the approaching winter reliefs, which, we fervently prayed, would see us moving to more congenial surroundings as far removed from the frontier outposts as possible. If there was anything that might have struck a close observer as being a departure from the normal, it was the improvement in the behavior of the Afridis. They seemed to have turned over a new leaf and to have become models of military virtue. But if any one gave it a second thought, the improvement was probably attributed to the sobering effect which Dilawar's fall might have had upon them. No doubt it would soon wear off!

Then a strange thing happened. One night, soon after "lights out" had sounded, and we were all snug in bed, a series of shots in rapid succession sent us hurrying to our alarm-posts. Again it was Gunga Singh, the Sikh. who had fired. He happened to be on duty at the same post as when he shot Sikandar. This time he explained that, hearing the tread of feet, accompanied by the clatter of loose stones, in the ravine beneath his post, he had challenged. Receiving no answer, he had fired at a dark object which he saw, or thought he saw, moving towards him. All was, however, now still, and the enemy or thieves must have either withdrawn on finding themselves discovered, or were waiting till the alarm should have subsided before making another advance. A strong patrol was immediately ordered out and the parapet manned. The

patrol cautiously felt their way down the ravine, but could discover no trace of an enemy. After a long and careful search they were about to return to the fort, when one of the flank men reported that he thought he heard the groans of some stricken creature. Following the direction from which the sounds appeared to come, the patrol discovered a COW lying mortally wounded among some boulders. The mystery was therefore solved, and a titter ran round the walls as the leader of the patrol shouted out the news.

But for Gunga Singh there was no humor in the situation. He, a Sikh, had killed a cow-that is, had committed the foulest sacrilege of which a Hindoo can be guilty. He would thenceforth be unclean-a pariah amongst his brethren. The native officer of his company asked permission for him to be relieved at his post, and, having obtained it, snatched the rifle from the unhappy man and pushed him from the place with curses calculated to wither him on the spot.

The old Sikh priest of the regiment then took Gunga Singh in hand, and immediately instituted a rigorous course of purification. After certain preliminaries had been duly fulfilled, Gunga Singh was given leave in order that he might betake himself to the sacred Ganges and wash and be clean. Many were the penances that were required of him, heavy the fees he paid before he was permitted again to share the cup and platter. But he fulfilled all that was required of him without a murmur and with the steadfast courage of a true Sikh, and came Blackwood's Magazine.

back to the regiment prepared to take up the thread of life where he had left it. This, however, he was not allowed to do. He met with no overt hostility; no one abused him or threw the past in his teeth, yet Gunga Singh found it impossible to settle down in his old place. It was not that his brother Sikhs had not forgiven him; they had received him back into their midst with every token of good comradeship. and even his stern old company officer had bade him a gruff but kindly welcome. Nevertheless, even the British officers could not but be sensible that a subtle influence was at work throughout the regiment-that strange indefinable suggestion of "something wrong." which none know so well how to inspire as the natives of India-and Gunga Singh became daily more miserable.

The Afridis meanwhile remained steeped in what might be termed absolutely obtrusive virtue.

At last the strain became more than the proud young soldier could bear, and Gunga Singh left us to woo fortune afresh, still beneath the banner of the Great Sirkar, but under far distant skies.

On his departure the Afridis regained their normal high spirits, and once more the "defaulter's call" sounded through the lines with monotonous regularity.

"Gunga Singh's Cow" has become a regimental legend, and any newcomer who seeks enlightenment on the subject, or is curious to know "how the cow got there," is advised to ask the Afridi Company!

May is the poet's month, and when it opened under the Old Calendar, some fourteen days later than it has done since 1752, it was perhaps a little nearer the poet's ideal than it often is with us, who jibe at May, and wear surcoats in June. To Chaucer, indeed, May was the perfect month of the year. He never wearies of singing its praise. In a land still thickly forested and undyked, winter wore a sterner aspect, and spring a diviner radiance than with us. The month of May gleams through the gladness and the sadness of the Knightes Tale.

O Maye, with all thy floures and thy grene,

Right welcome be thou, faire freshe Maye.

The

And this superb romance, one of the greatest inventions of an English pen, opens, after a necessary prologue, with an exquisite description of a garden in the prime of May. Mr. Sieveking, in the charming introduction to his edition of various essays on gardens by the great stylists of the seventeenth century, draws attention to the statement in The Legacy of Gardening, published in 1651, that "Gardening is of few years' standing in England." passage, quoted at length by Mr. Sieveking, apparently only refers to what is called by our modern garden essayist "the kitchen or utilitarian garden," though this is not altogether clear. But in any event, both the author of the Legacy of Gardening, and Thomas Fuller, who followed his lead, are wrong if they meant to do more than tell us that at the end of the sixteenth century Dutch gardening was giving encouragement and new resources to our own gardeners. This is clear enough, even in the case of the kitchen garden, from various passages LIVING AGE. VOL. LI. 2688

in the plays of Shakespeare, while Chaucer, and many another writer, tells us of glad garden-closes long before the days of gardening had begun in the Dutch lowlands. Who can forget the garden in the Knightes Tale, the Athenian garden planted in England, where the shining Emelie, the young sister of Ipolita the Queen, walked on a fair May morning in sight of those woeful prisoners Arcite and Palamon? If we look with their eyes from the square barred window in the keep down into the garden, we light on a happy picture:

Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse,

Behind her back, a yarde long I gesse. And in the garden at the sonne uprist She walketh up and doun wher as she list.

She gathereth floures, partie white and red,

To make a sotel garland for hire hed, And as an angel hevenlich she sang.

The dungeon keep lay beside the garden wall, and thence, looking down, the woeful prisoner Palamon, as the day broke over the noble city, saw the garden-close and its happy warbler,

And eke the garden, full of branches grene

Ther as this freshe Emelie shene Was in hire walk, and romed up and down.