"Listen to me, Dewes. I have lived for the Frontier. I have had no other
interest, almost no other ties. I am not a man of friends. I believed at
one time Linforth was my friend. I believed I liked him very much. But I
think now that it was only because he was bound up with the Frontier. The
Frontier has been my wife, my children, my home, my one long and lasting
passion. And I am very well content that it has been so. I don't regret
missed opportunities of happiness. What I regret is that I shall not be
alive in twenty-one years to avert the danger I foresee, or to laugh at
my fears if I am wrong. They can do what they like in Rajputana and
Bengal and Bombay. But on the Frontier I want things to go well. Oh, how
I want them to go well!"

Luffe had grown very pale, and the sweat glistened upon his forehead.
Dewes held to his lips a glass of brandy which stood upon a table
beside the bed.

"What danger do you foresee?" asked Dewes. "I will remember what you
say."

"Yes, remember it; write it out, so that you may remember it, and din it
into their ears at Government House," said Luffe. "You take these boys,
you give them Oxford, a season in London--did you ever have a season in
London when you were twenty-one, Dewes? You show them Paris. You give
them opportunities of enjoyment, such as no other age, no other place
affords--has ever afforded. You give them, for a short while, a life of
colour, of swift crowding hours of pleasure, and then you send them
back--to settle down in their native States, and obey the orders of the
Resident. Do you think they will be content? Do you think they will have
their heart in their work, in their humdrum life, in their elaborate