"No, sir," replied the soldier. "I knew we were an escort, so I packed the Maxim on a mule. There's a corner in the old fort at Sar, I remembered, that it would look well in: and I thought, if we had to spend the winter there, we might make the place as cosy as we could. I meant to tell you, sir, as I had to requisition some extra transport, and I scheduled the lot as 'gifts for the Khan.'" "Well, I must say you're a cool hand!" gasped his chief. "I thought we'd be sure to let him have them if he came for them," explained Terrington simply; "so it read all right. I wasn't quite clear if a Maxim could be included under necessary equipment!" "Oh, you weren't, weren't you," exclaimed the other. "And how do you think I'm to explain it?" "Wouldn't it come under my knowledge of the country of which you were to make the fullest use, sir?" was the innocent reply. Sir Colvin laughed, and the talk turned on what he held to be the peaceable possibilities of Sar. On that subject Terrington could hold nothing but his tongue. He was an adept at minding his own business, but he tried on the way up country to illuminate his chief's views of the men with whom he had to deal, by tales of Sari humour, which were mostly pointed by the decapitation or disembowelment of the humorist's best friend. At Sar the Mission found everything in silver paper. It was met imposingly at the Gate of the Great Evil, ten miles below the city, where the river tears a way through rocks of black basalt, and had eaten there the salted cake of a sacred hospitality. It was welcomed into Sar by the bellowings of an unspeakable music, and for three days the bearers of gifts and good wishes wore a path through the Bazar between the Residency and the New Palace. Chantry reported a pleasing change in the Khan's bearing since the Mission had been appointed, his affability, attention to protests and anxiety for the comfort of the new comers. Out of this very consideration arose the first note of discord, owing, as Chantry put it under his breath, to Terrington's "damned pigheadedness." His own guard of Sikhs, Dogras and Bakót levies had been housed in the Old Palace, now called the Fort, a low mud and stone building, whose brown walls of astounding thickness rose hard upon the green tangle of chenar in which the Residency stood. The little force fitted it as scantily as a wizened kernel fits its shell, and, although the river washed the Fort's eastern face and secured that from assault, was too scant to hold it. The addition of the odd two hundred of the Commissioner's escort made defence quite another matter. The Khan knew that, and with many apologies for the lack of accommodation in the Fort, cleared out his own barracks on the other side of the river, and put them with immense affability and the stores they contained at Chantry's disposal for the escort's occupation.