Sir Henry Lennox had resigned his post, and the military despotism in Khemistan proper was at an end. The Europeans at Alibad journeyed in two detachments to the port on the river to bid farewell to the old warrior, who was making his last triumphal progress amid the tears and lamentations of the people to whom, according to his enemies and their newspapers, his name was a signal for universal execration. The General and his flotilla of steamers passed on, and Major Keeling returned to Alibad, refusing to be comforted. The epoch of the soldier was over, that of the civilian had begun, and, like his old commander, he detested civilians as a class, without prejudice to certain favoured individuals, with a furious hatred. Mr Crayne, the newly appointed Commissioner, was not only a civilian but a man of such an awkward temper that it was said his superiors and contemporaries at Bombay had united to thrust the post upon him. It was not his by seniority, but they would have been willing to see him made Governor-General if it would remove him from their immediate neighbourhood. In him Major Keeling perceived a foeman worthy of his steel, and before the new ruler had fairly arrived in the province, they were embarked upon a fierce paper warfare over almost every point of Mr Crayne’s inaugural utterance. After a hard day’s work, it was a positive refreshment to the soldier to sit down and compose a fiery letter to his obnoxious superior; and since he was one of those to whom experience brings little wisdom, he repeated with zest the old mistake which had made him a by-word in official circles. More than once in former years, when he thought he had made a specially good point in a controversy of this kind, or forced his opponent into a particularly untenable corner, he had sent the correspondence to the Bombay papers, which were ready enough to print it, salving their consciences by printing also scathing remarks on the sender. They gave him no sympathy, and the military authorities sent him stinging rebukes; but as if by a kind of fatality he did the same thing over again as often as circumstances made it possible. His friends and subordinates looked on with fear and trembling, and whispered that the only reason he was still in the service was the fact that no one else could keep the frontier quiet: his enemies chuckled while they writhed, and said that the man was hard at work twisting the rope to hang himself, and it must be long enough soon.