"Oh, Hal, my hated r-r-rival!" breathed Charteris, slapping his friend on the back when they got out into the open air. "Ain't it as good as a play? But what a monster of iniquity a man feels beside a girl like that!" he added sentimentally. "Do you wonder that I fell in love with her?" "No, I don't," said Gerrard savagely. "But I wish with all my heart you hadn't!" "The same to you, my boy!" laughed Charteris. CHAPTER III. THE OLD ORDER AND THE NEW. In little more than a week after the ball, Charteris and Gerrard had shaken from their feet the dust of Ranjitgarh with its Occidental influences, and were journeying, though westward, towards the pure unadulterated East in their respective districts. Charteris' sphere of influence was reached first, a land of prevailing sand-colour with oases of almost painful green, over which the Granthi sovereignty had never been more than merely nominal. A Granthi army had made periodic inroads into Darwan, sweeping off all the cattle it could find, by way of collecting the revenue, and the Darwanis retorted by incursions across the Granthi border, designed to assert their independence. Charteris was at the head of a strong force of Granthis, to emphasize the fact that he represented the Ranjitgarh Durbar, not the British Crown nor the Company, and his duties were extensive, if simple. He was to bring down the oppressor and relieve the oppressed, destroy the towers of robber chiefs and induce the occupants to turn their unaccustomed hands to honest labour, establish order in place of confusion, and generally to make it known and felt that there now existed, and must be obeyed, a law superior to the sweet will of the strongest.