startling kind. When a man knows who dances the Halli-Hukk, and
how, and when, and where, he knows something to be proud of. He
has gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland was not proud,
though he had helped once, at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the
Death Bull, which no Englishman must even look upon; had mastered
the thieves'-patter of the changars; had taken a Eusufzai horse-
thief alone near Attock; and had stood under the mimbar-board of a
Border mosque and conducted service in the manner of a Sunni
Mollah.

His crowning achievement was spending eleven days as a faquir in
the gardens of Baba Atal at Amritsar, and there picking up the
threads of the great Nasiban Murder Case. But people said, justly
enough: "Why on earth can't Strickland sit in his office and write
up his diary, and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up
the incapacity of his seniors?" So the Nasiban Murder Case did him
no good departmentally; but, after his first feeling of wrath, he
returned to his outlandish custom of prying into native life. By
the way, when a man once acquires a taste for this particular
amusement, it abides with him all his days. It is the most
fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where other men
took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what he
called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the
time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a
while. He was a quiet, dark young fellow--spare, black-eyes--and,
when he was not thinking of something else, a very interesting
companion. Strickland on Native Progress as he had seen it was
worth hearing. Natives hated Strickland; but they were afraid of
him. He knew too much.