“But did General Keeling patronise races? I shouldn’t have thought they were at all in his line.” “They were not; but then, this isn’t a race in the ordinary sense of the word. It was first run just at the time when everything in Khemistan was named after him, and besides, it recalls one of his own pet dodges. They say that he used to subject the men that wanted to serve under him to pretty severe tests, and this was one of them. He used to rouse them up in the middle of the night, and they had to turn out without boots, catch a strange horse, and ride him round the town without a saddle, and with only a halter for a bridle.” “It’s to be hoped that the town was smaller in those days than now?” “Of course it was, but we don’t exact such a test as that. The ponies are all turned loose on the course without saddles, and the men, in slippers, have to catch them and mount. Any man who catches his own is disqualified. Then they have to get them round the course without bridle or whip of any kind. I have noticed that the spectators are always pretty nearly dead with laughing before the end, while the competitors get black in the face with restrained emotion.” “But you don’t mean that General Keeling really treated his officers in that way?” “I do, indeed. He had to weed them out, you see, or he would have been overrun with volunteers. Oh, you may have full confidence in my veracity, Miss North, even though I once had a report returned me by a jealous Secretary with the remark that I should do well to quit the Civil Service for the path of romantic fiction. The pains I took over that report! You see, I had an inkling that it would be seen by a very exalted person, who is great on us juniors’ cultivating a literary style in our official writings. I can truly say that there has never been such a literary gem sent in since Macaulay left India. It was written in the most beautiful English--though I say it--full of tender touches and delicate conceits, and as to quotations, and Oriental imagery, and wealth of imaginative detail----! Ah well, it’s better not to think of it,” and Fitz sighed deeply. “Why? Did it bring down upon you a rebuke from the Great Great One?” “No, alas! for it never reached him. The Secretary intercepted it, naturally enough. Who would ever have looked at his minutes again after it? But at least it furnished him with an ideal to strive after. I have reason to believe he is in a lunatic asylum at this moment. The effort was too great, you see.” “That was rather close,” said Mabel irrelevantly, as the wheel shaved the basketwork tray of an itinerant sweetseller by the roadside. “He shouldn’t be so intent on his prospective gains. Look how many of the fellows there are about! That shows we are near the ground. They flock to this place from all quarters when they know there’s a _tamasha_ on.”