"Oh, you have spoilt your subjects by dealing out justice too easily," said Gerrard, "so you can't in conscience refuse it them now. Let us have our ride, and go back at your usual hour. The picnic must go. You can accommodate me with a seat on the bench, and I'll pick holes in your law." "That you may well do." Charteris paused to give the necessary directions to the suppliants and his Munshis, and resumed as they rode on. "My law has too much common-sense about it to recommend itself to your conventional mind. Why, t'other day I had to decide the ownership of a disputed piece of ground--as hard swearing as ever I heard, and trains of mounted adherents and sympathisers riding with us to view the plot, and perjuring themselves for their respective sides. I saw it was six of one and half-a-dozen of t'other, so when we were returning, precious slow and stately, I gave a sudden view-halloa! and started off. They were bound to come too, and I should have died of laughing to see those old liars bumping along and running foul of one another if I hadn't been too busy. I had the claimants one on each side of me, and by judiciously boring either quad. when it seemed inclined to draw ahead, I kept 'em fairly level. When they had had as much as I thought good for them, I pulled up, and several old codgers went over their nags' heads, of course. But all I said was that as the claimants had come in level, it was clear the land was to be divided between them, and we went back and did it there and then. They had a shawl apiece to sweeten the bargain, and I made a feast for the hangers-on, so everybody was pleased." "That's the sort of thing that makes them call you the mad sahib," said Gerrard. "Wonder they care to depend on you." "That's only because you forget that 'mad' don't mean the same to them as to us. All Sahibs are mad, of course--and say that I am a little madder than most. But all mad people are directly inspired by Heaven. Therefore the madder I am, the more surely am I inspired. Twig?" "It's a pretty deduction. I wonder if Sadiq Ali would set me down as inspired if I stood on my head before him when I go back?" "No, because you couldn't do it!" said Charteris wickedly. "Takes some practice even to be effectively mad, my boy."