message thou brought. It has come in good time for the Mahrattas are
like wolves that have turned upon each other. Sindhia, Rao Holkar,
both beaten by your armies, now fight amongst themselves, and suck like
vampires the life-blood of the Rajputs. And Holkar has become insane.
But lately, retreating through Mewar, he went to the shrine of Krishna
and prostrating himself before his heathen image reviled the god as the
cause of his disaster. When the priests, aghast at the profanity,
expostulated, he levied a fine of three hundred thousand rupees upon
them, and when, fearing an outrage to the image these infidels call a
god, they sent the idol to Udaipur, he way-laid the men who had taken
it and slew them to a man."

"Your knowledge of affairs is great, Chief," Barlow commented, for most
of this was new to him.

"Yes, Captain Sahib, we Pindaris ride north, and east, and south, and
west; we are almost as free as the eagles of the air, claiming that our
home is where our cooking-pots are. We do not trust to ramparts such
as Fort Chitor where we may be cooped up and slain--such as the Rajputs
have been three times in the three famed sacks of Chitor--but also,
Sahib, this is all wrong."

The Chief halted and swept an arm in an encompassing embrace of the
tent-studded plain.

"We are not a nation to muster an army because now the cannon that
belch forth a shower of death mow horsemen down like ripened grain. It
was the dead Chief's ambition, but it is wrong."

Barlow was struck with the wise logic of this tall wide-browed warrior,