Whereupon a mischievous aide-de-camp gave the word for the "halt" to be sounded. Confused out of everything save obedience, the charger stopped dead in his tracks, and the Lâlâ shot over his head, still in a sitting posture. On being relieved of his burden, the co-ordination "stables" apparently came uppermost in the horse's mind, for it walked away slowly, bearing with it the end of the Lâlâ's turban still fastened in the crupper. He, feeling a sudden insecurity in his headgear, and being, even in his confusion, painfully conscious of his baldness, clung to the lower folds with both hands. At this slight check, the charger, not to be baulked, set off at a canter, and over rolled the fat Lâlâ, heels in air. Then, and not till then, one roar of laughter rent the air. For as he lay there on his back, kicking like a turned turtle, the _pugree_ began to unwind like a ball of thread, while the Lâlâ held on like grim death to the lower portion. Not until the last fold had slipped through his fingers and a quarter of a mile or so of pink muslin was fluttering across the parade ground, did he realise the position, and struggling to his seat pass his hand over his bald head with a deprecating smile. "Go out, Raby, and pick him up," gasped the General aching with laughter. "You're in political charge, aren't you?" But Philip Marsden, who happened to be on staff duty that day, was already pouring in oil and wine to the Lâlâ's hurt dignity when the young civilian came up with nonchalant courtesy. "_Shâhbâsh, sahib!_" he said, "you sat him splendidly, and that last prop would have undone a Centaur." The Lâlâ, grinned a ghastly smile, and Philip Marsden turned impatiently, saying aside: "Get him home, do! He looks so helpless with his bald head; it seems a shame to laugh." John Raby raised his eyebrows. "The General shall lend him his carriage. That will soothe his wounded vanity." So the Lâlâ, with his head tied up in a red pocket-handkerchief, went home in the big man's barouche, and the spectators of his discomfiture laughed again at the recollection of it. "You ought to be the editor of a native newspaper, Marsden," remarked John Raby. "You would be grand on the unsympathetic Anglo-Indian. But if I'd seen the Viceroy himself being unwound like a reel of cotton I must have chuckled." "No doubt," replied the other laughing himself. "Yet I am sure a keen sense of the ludicrous is unfortunate in a conquering race. We English always laugh when policy should make us grave; that is why we don't succeed." "Perhaps; for myself I prefer to grin. As some one says, humour is the religion of to-day. Those who believe in eternity have time for tears. We others,--why we cry '_Vogue la galère!_'" Lâlâ Shunker Dâs, however, without any abiding belief in a future state, was in no laughing mood as he lay under Râm Lâl's manipulations, listening captiously to his items of bazaar rumour.