"Yes. Haven't you seen him? By gad, he's a wonder. A giant of a fellow with an eye like a hawk and a big black beard that seems, somehow, to suggest a blacksmith. He turned up at our mess on the first evening he was in camp. Everybody was laughing and joking as usual and he never said a word. I didn't understand it at the time, but I noticed that Nicholson just glowered at each man who told a funny story, and, by degrees, we were all sitting like mutes at a funeral. Then he said, in a deep voice that made us jump: 'When some of you gentlemen can spare me a moment I shall be glad to hear what you have been doing here during the last ten weeks.' There was no sneer in his words. We have had fighting enough, Heaven knows, but we felt that by 'doing' he meant 'attacking,' not 'defending.' Sure as death, he will create a stir. Indeed, the leaven is working already. He sent me out here this morning, as he has gone to meet the movable column from Lahore, and there was a rumor of a sortie from Delhi to cut it off." Malcolm fresh from association with Havelock realized that a grave and serious-minded soldier could ill brook the jests and idle talk that dominated the average military mess of the period. "Nicholson sounds like the right man in the right place," he commented. The dragoon vouched for it emphatically. "He has put an end to pony-racing and quoits," said he, "and there is to be no more fighting in our shirt sleeves. Bear in mind, we have had a deuce of a time. I've been in twenty-one fights myself, and that is not all. The sepoys usually swarm out hell-for-leather and we rush to meet them. There is a scrimmage for an hour or so, we shove 'em back, Hodson gets in a bit of saber-work, we pick up the wounded, tell off a burial party, and start a cricket match or a gymkhana. Of course the fighting is stiff while it lasts and my regiment has lost its two best bowlers, a really sound bat and a crack rider in the pony heats. Still if we don't lose any ground we gain none, and I can't help agreeing with Nicholson that war isn't a picnic." Frank managed not to smile at the naïveté of his companion. Though Saumarez was nearly his own age he felt that their difference in rank was not nearly so great as the divergence in their conception of the magnitude of the task before Britain in India. Nevertheless Saumarez saw that Nicholson was a force, and that was something. "Is the Hodson you mention the same man who rode from Kurnaul to Meerut before the affair of Ghazi-ud-din-Nuggur?" he asked. "Yes, same chap. A regular firebrand and no mistake. He has gathered a crowd of dare-devils known as Hodson's Horse, and they go into action with a dash that I thought was only to be found in regular cavalry. But here we are at our ghât. That is a weedy-looking Arab you are riding--plenty of bone, though. Will he go aboard a budgerow without any fuss?" "Oh, yes. He will do most things," was the quiet reply.