Jem Agar was thought very highly of by almost all concerned, except himself, and it had not occurred to him to devote much thought to this matter. He was one of the very few men to whom a senior officer or a pretty girl could say, “You are a nice man and a clever fellow,” without doing the least harm. Men who thought such things of themselves laughed at him behind his back, and wondered vaguely why he got promotion. It never occurred to them to reflect that “old Jem” invariably acquitted himself well in each new position thrust upon him by a persistently kind fortune; they contented themselves with an indefinite conviction that each severally could have done better, as is the way of clever young men. One of the many mysteries, by the way, which will have to be cleared up in a busy hereafter is that appertaining to brilliant boys, clever undergraduates, and gifted young men. What becomes of them? There are hundreds at school at this moment--we have it from their own parents; hundreds more at Oxford and Cambridge--we have it from themselves. In a few years they will be absorbed in a world of men very much inferior to themselves (by their own showing), and will be no more seen. Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But--and mark ye this--he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future date. At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings. Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned elsewhere. Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the scenery, illustrating upon living “running deer” in turbans his views upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.