"I think it ought to be stopped altogether," Nita said indignantly; "the people of the towns can do very well without Afridi cattle, and if not, they should be made to. It would be much better for them to have to pay an anna extra a pound for their meat, than for us to have to spend hundreds of lives and millions of pounds in getting the rifles back again." "Yes, there are many things that we soldiers, who are only here to do the fighting, can make neither head nor tail of. If India were governed by soldiers instead of civilians, things would be very differently managed. As it is, we can only wonder and grumble. The authorities are so mightily afraid of injuring the susceptibilities of the natives that they pamper them in every way, and even when it is manifest that the whole of the community suffer by their so doing. It is the more ridiculous, because, in the old days, their own rulers paid not the slightest attention to these same susceptibilities, or to the likes or dislikes of their subjects." "It is all very strange," Nita said, "and very unaccountable." "Everyone on the frontier knows that sooner or later we shall have to deal with the Afridis, and that it will be an enormously difficult and expensive business, and will cost an immense amount of life." "Don't let us talk about it any more; it makes me out of all patience to think of such folly." The journey was resumed the next morning, and continued day after day and week after week. Sometimes they were obliged to turn quite out of their direct course, and they had to run considerable risks to get fresh supplies for themselves and forage for the pony. Both were obtained by entering villages at night, and filling their sack from stacks of grain and forage. The grain they pounded between flat stones as they sat by their fire, and so made a coarse meal which they generally boiled into a sort of porridge, their sauce-pans being gourds cut in the fields. Meat they had no difficulty about, as Carter managed, when necessary, to kill a bullock and take sufficient meat for ten days' supply. They seldom caught sight of a villager when travelling through the valleys, for the Afridis have a marked objection to moving about after nightfall. Once or twice one or two of them approached them, but Carter raised such a loud and threatening roar, that they in each case retreated with all speed to their village, which they filled with alarm with tales of having encountered strange and terrible creatures.