CHAPTER V
In which a russet-haired girl from New York comes into the tale and in which, furthermore, the blade flashes free, putting several low knaves to rout.
Like many others of Britain's leading families, the Wades of Dealle, though of “county” stock, were more intimately connected with the Orient than with the yellow Sussex wold where they had settled in the days of Hengist and Horsa.
Generation after generation, they had assisted at the clouting of England's imperial fortunes in India. They had fought—and bravely fought—in the early wars of the Honorable John Company, against Moghuls, Sikhs, Burmans, Mahrattas, Persians, Afghans, Rohilkands, and innumerable border tribes. Hector's great-grandfather had saved General Napier's life in the battle of Moodkee by interposing his arm, and losing it at the wrist, when a warrior was about to bring down the togha, the brutal, crooked, short sword of the Sikh, on the general's head; his grandfather had been one of the immortal band of heroes who blew up the Delhi powder magazine, and incidentally themselves, when the 38th and 54th Sepoy regiments massacred their white officers and carried the flame of the mutiny into the heart of Delhi; his father had earned the V. C. as he marched with Lord Roberts columns from Kabul to Kandahar.
