With noiseless tread each man took up the station assigned to him by his officer, and the whole command stood in breathless silence until the dawn in the east lifted up the curtain of the night and revealed the village to them. A detachment of men were marched into it, and half-a-dozen of the leading men of the clan were seized and marched to an open space outside of it, where the general was standing with some of his officers. The executioner with bared arm and gleaming sword awaited but the word of command, and six heads rolled on to the ground and the tragedy was over. The bugles sounded and the men fell into their ranks, and almost before the whole of the village had time to rub their eyes to assure themselves that they were awake, the avengers of law were hurrying back to the city they had left at midnight. The effect of this stern act of justice was perfectly magical in its effects. The news spread with the rapidity of lightning through the length and breadth of this famous general's jurisdiction. With the fall of those heads, every trace of lawlessness vanished from the great clans that had been terrorizing society. Men could now travel freely without any danger of molestation, and even in the darkness of the night no one dared to lay his hand upon a member even of the weakest of the clans. The fear of the general was in the hearts of the transgressors, for conscience made cowards of them all, and stories were circulated about the almost supernatural knowledge that he had of men's doings, and which every one implicitly believed in. And so during the term of his office there was an end to blackmailing, and the region became as peaceful as though the gamblers had burnt their cards and had taken to reading religious books, and the opium smokers had become reformed, and the passion for unlawful gains had died out of the hearts of the men who had made it impossible for honest men to travel freely either for business or for pleasure very far from their own doors. But whilst this was the case, there was no real reformation in the hearts of a single one of those who had made society unsafe for men and women who wished to live a law-abiding life. They were simply afraid of the man that had the instant power of life and death, and who without trial of judge or jury, and without the fear of any superior court to call in question his decisions, could hand over a person at a moment's notice to the man who held the gleaming sword, and who with one stroke of it could decide in two seconds a matter that lawyers in England would wrangle over for months.