What are the elements of the follower's sang-froid? In the case of this sweeper it can only have been the love of honour or adventure, but he was a very exceptional man, and one cannot expect to find the same spirit in the normal drudge. The good old Drabi who, when the bullets are flicking round, pulls his blanket about his ears and subsides a little in his cart is not of this mould. In an analysis of the composition of his courage lack of imagination would play a part, and fatalism, which becomes a virtue in the presence of death; but the main thing, and this explains two-thirds of his stiffening, is that it never enters his head that it is possible not to carry on with his job. In the follower's honest, slow brain, the processes which complicate decision in subtler minds are clotted into one--the sense of order, continuity, routine, everything that is implied in a regulation. These things are of the laws of necessity. He does not know it, but "carrying on" is his gospel, philosophy, and creed. * * * * * PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FOOTNOTES: Footnote 1: 2nd and 9th. Footnote 2: The 1/1st, 2/2nd, 2/3rd, 1/4th, 2/8th, and 1/9th. Footnote 3: The Tunkha Nameh of Guru Govind. Footnote 4: Sabaa aswad. Footnote 5: "The Indian Corps in France," by Lieut.-Colonel J. W. B. Merewether, C.I.E., and Sir Frederick Smith. Footnote 6: These statistics relate to the pre-war establishment of the Indian Army. Footnote 7: The remnants of "the gallant few" became the nucleus of the Loyal 16th Regiment. Footnote 8: Brave deeds. Footnote 9: The Commander, Ahmed Bey, surrendered to the 90th Punjabis. Footnote 10: The peak which protrudes from the centre of the turban. Footnote 11: Stretcher-bearer. Footnote 12: Waterskin. Transcriber's Notes 1. Silently corrected typographical errors; retained non-standard spellings and dialect. 2. Italic text in the text version is delimited by _underscores_. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sepoy, by Edmund Candler