"My dear," he said, "in the British Army you must do as the British Army does. And there is one thing which the British Army _Will Not_ tolerate, and that is--a cultivated mind." "I don't think that's peculiar to the Army," replied Mrs. Lewknor. "The attitude's characteristic of our race." Mr. Royal was not in fact popular among his brother officers. His superiors complained that his manner was slightly insolent, his juniors that it was so damn superior. The men liked him for his efficiency, and some women admired him--too much it was whispered. Mrs. Lewknor followed Ernie's military career with quiet interest. Not that there was very much to follow: for Ernie, apart from the cricket-field, had no career. He did not seek promotion, and was not in fact offered it. As Mr. Royal very truly said,--"He can't come it enough to make an N.C.O." The habit of authority indeed sat ill on his shoulders; but he was liked by officers and men; and his cricket gave him a place in the regimental team. But there was little in Army life to do for Ernie the one thing essential self demands--encourage growth; and not a little to repress it. When the first newness had worn off, Ernie was spiritually unsatisfied and solitary. The grosser vices of the men never appealed to him, and the men themselves were not his sort. To get away from them he sometimes wandered far a-field, poking and prying into the temples of the various sects, and not seldom found himself in the crowded streets of the native city, a lonely khaki figure in a sun-helmet, regarding the many-coloured crowd, and asking himself, in the philosophical way he inherited from his father, "What's the meaning of it all?" It was on one of these rambles that the solitary incident of his career in India occurred to him. He was standing at the foot of the hill in the native city of Lahore, watching the traffic in the narrow streets, when he saw a mem-sahib driving a tum-tum slowly through the heavy ox-traffic. The syce for some reason had descended, and the lady was alone. Just then a huge elephant with painted sides came swinging down the steep street, at the head of a religious procession, singing and clashing cymbals. The lady's pony, a dun country-bred, took fright and bolted. Ernie saw her face, quite calm beneath her solar topee, as she rushed past him, pulling at the run-away. It was Mrs. Lewknor. A few yards down the street the wheels of the tum-tum cannoned into a sack borne by a small donkey. The donkey, already tottering beneath his load, collapsed and lay in the dust unable to rise. The driver of the donkey, an unsavoury giant, pock-marked, abused the mem-sahib. A crowd gathered. The religious procession was held up, the elephant swinging his trunk discontentedly and spouting showers of dust over his flanks. Ernie didn't like the look of things, for it was common talk in the lines that the native city was mutinous.