Sadiq Ali's impatience to behold his new adviser could scarcely brook the delay caused by waiting for the escort to come up, and Gerrard became accustomed to the sight of exhausted messengers clattering in in clouds of dust to demand that he should start at once. But his dignity as Sir Edmund Antony's representative forbade this, and when he rode into Habshiabad at last it was in the midst of his picked troop of Granthis, who were obviously scornful of the military display with which the Nawab was prepared to welcome them. In his anxiety to improve his army, poor old Sadiq Ali had handed it over of late to a drunken European adventurer, who asserted that he had been in Ajit Singh's service, but whom Gerrard suspected, from certain peculiarities of equipment that he had introduced, of being a deserter from some Scottish regiment. This suspicion was deepened when it appeared that General Desdichado, as he called himself, had recently been seized with illness of such a severe character that it confined him entirely to his house, and even to his zenana--whither, of course, no intrusive visitor could follow him. After vain attempts to obtain an interview, Gerrard thought it well to leave his predecessor in peace with his arrack-bottle, and take the army in hand from the beginning. He had not expected, when he heard they had a European instructor, to find them ignorant even of the rudiments of drill as he understood it, and he was confronted with the difficulty that he could not possibly drill them all himself, and nothing would induce them to take orders from any of his Granthis. He thought of asking for a few Mohammedan non-commissioned officers from the force at Ranjitgarh, but before he could do so, Sadiq Ali, who followed him about in a state of admiring wonder and affection, learned his difficulty and promised to meet it.