Estimates of ease and affluence vary with the point of view. While his older brother lived, Monty had continued in his element, a cavalry officer, his combined income and pay ample for all that the Bombay side of India might require of an English gentleman. They say that a finer polo player, a steadier shot on foot at a tiger, or a bolder squadron leader never lived. But to Monty's infinite disgust his brother died childless. It is divulging no secret that the income that passed with the title varied between five and seven thousand pounds a year, according as coal was high, and tenants...

Hira Singh (or Hira Singh: When India Came to Fight in Flanders) is a short novel by Talbot Mundy, originally published (under the title Hira Singh's Tale) as a four-part serial in Adventure Magazine in October and November 1917, and published in book form in 1918 by Cassell (London) and Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis). The hero of the story is a Sikh officer, Ranjoor Singh, an earlier adventure of whom is recounted in the novel The Winds of the World.

The gut of the pass rose toward Zeitoon at a sharp incline--a ramp of slippery wet clay, half a mile long, reaching across from buttress to buttress of the impregnable hills. It was more than a ridden mule could do to keep its feet on the slope, and we had to dismount. It was almost as much as we ourselves could do to make progress with the aid of sticks, and we knew at last what Kagig had meant by his boast that nothing on wheels could approach his mountain home.