The first distribution was scheduled like an administrative exercise, not a festival.
Harrington insisted on it.
There would be no single grand gathering where a crowd could swell into a chant. No speeches from platforms. No banners. No drums. No slogans. The work would be done village-by-village, in controlled batches, with lists verified and receipts signed—thumbprints taken where names could not be written.
It was not generosity. It was procedure.
And the Governor's associates—three men sent down from Lahore with clean boots and sharper eyes—arrived early, as if they expected to catch a scandal in the act.
They were not told to look for kindness. They were told to look for two things: control and credit.
The credit, by order, belonged to the Crown.
The control belonged to whoever could hold a village without burning it.
Harrington chose the first village carefully.
Not the most loyal, because loyalty makes every outcome look easy. Not the worst, because desperation makes even orderly distribution feel like provocation. He picked a village that was typical—wounded, distrustful, watchful. A place where people had learned that the state appeared only to collect, never to return.
By sunrise, the police cart arrived with sealed sacks and a small cage of livestock. A clerk stepped down with forms. Another with ink. Two constables followed, looking nervous. The village men stood in clusters, not too close, not too far—pretending they were merely curious while measuring the weight of the day.
And then the Governor's observers noticed what was missing.
No estate flag. No lodge staff. No Jinnah.
They looked around, expecting the private man who had become a rumor.
He was nowhere near.
Harrington arrived in his official vehicle, alone, carrying only a leather folder and the authority of a stamp. He nodded once at the headman, once at the clerks, and then he turned his attention to the crowd without smiling, because smiling was sometimes misunderstood as weakness.
"Names," Harrington said. "In order. As the list is written."
A ripple moved through the villagers. It was not excitement. It was disbelief.
Behind Harrington—quiet, spaced out like punctuation—were Farabis.
Only three.
That was the detail that unsettled the Governor's associates the most.
They had expected twenty men, rifles lined up, boots on throats. Instead, they saw three disciplined figures walking in slow, deliberate patrol around the gathering.
No shouting. No whips. No swagger.
They carried rifles, yes—but the rifles were not pointed to threaten. They were carried like tools that belonged to an institution, not to a temper.
The associates watched closely.
The Farabis did not harass anyone. They did not bark orders. They did not insult villagers. They moved with restraint, scanning the edges of the crowd, watching hands, watching eyes, watching the small movements that preceded trouble.
They had also done something clever that none of the Lahore men expected.
They had hired local youth.
Not as informers in the crude sense, but as helpers—boys and young men with clean arms and eager posture, paid a small wage to manage lines, carry sacks, move livestock, and keep order at the edges.
A boy shouted a name. Another checked it against a list. A clerk marked the page. A thumbprint went onto a form. A sack was handed over.
Procedure in motion.
The villagers began to understand that this was not charity. It was an exchange between paper and property—between proof and restitution.
And in a district where most justice had always been invisible, visibility itself became the message.
Harrington's voice stayed flat and official.
"This property was recovered during Crown operations," he announced. "It is being returned to restore civil order. Claims will be recorded. Fraud will be punished."
No poetry. No heroism.
Yet the crowd leaned in as if they were hearing the first honest sentence spoken by government in years.
The Governor's associates watched the faces. They saw what mattered: the softening of suspicion into attention; the emergence of something close to gratitude—not loud, not worshipful, but practical.
The Raj returning what was stolen.
A hand, not a shadow.
At the far edge of the gathering, trouble arrived dressed in ideology.
A man with a thin moustache and loud confidence began to push forward, speaking over the clerk. His voice rose not with pain, but with performance.
"This is all because the Congress has awakened the people—" he declared, waving his arm. "It is the national struggle that forced the Raj to act—"
The headman stiffened. Several villagers glanced away, already sensing danger. Politics in a hungry village was like fire near dry grain.
One of the Farabis turned his head.
He did not sprint. He did not rage. He walked toward the man at the same pace he had been walking—calm, controlled, inevitable.
The propagandist kept speaking, louder now, feeding on the attention.
"And when we take power—"
The Farabi reached him and, without ceremony, seized him by the upper arm.
The man tried to jerk away.
The Farabi tightened his grip with a quiet, practiced strength and guided him out of the crowd as if moving an object that had become inconvenient.
No punches. No shouting.
The second Farabi joined, quick and efficient. They pulled the man aside to a cleared patch near the cart and—still without spectacle—tied his hands with rope in clean loops.
The propagandist began to protest.
"This is oppression! This is violence!"
The Farabi looked at him once, then raised his voice—not to insult, but to make sure the village heard every word.
"Tell us," he said, loud enough for the whole gathering, "when the Zaildar's men were looting your grain and taking your daughters, who came to rescue you?"
The crowd stilled.
The propagandist blinked, confused by the sudden turn.
"Was it Congress?" the Farabi continued, voice firm, almost judicial. "Was it the Unionist Party? Was it the Muslim League?"
The propagandist opened his mouth and failed to speak.
The Farabi's gaze did not leave him.
"When the bandits took your cattle," he said, "did your politics bring it back?"
A few villagers shifted, uncomfortable in a new way—uncomfortable because the question was true.
The Farabi leaned in slightly, not threatening, but cutting through performance with reality.
"Now that someone is returning stolen property," he said, "you remember politics?"
He straightened and spoke louder again.
"Next time you want to shout slogans, do it in front of the bandits."
A tight silence followed—then something like an exhale moved through the crowd. Not laughter. Not celebration. Something more dangerous to political men: agreement.
The Farabi turned to the constable and handed the bound man over as if transferring a parcel.
"Disturbing Crown operations," he said. "Inciting disorder. Take him."
The constable swallowed and obeyed, relieved to have authority handed to him rather than demanded from him.
The Governor's associates exchanged looks.
They had expected villagers to be controlled by fear.
Instead they were seeing villagers controlled by something else: the quiet shock of competence.
The distribution continued.
Names. Thumbprints. Sacks. Livestock. Receipts.
Where disorder rose, it was contained quickly—controlled aggression that ended with offenders delivered to the police, not beaten in the dust.
By noon, the first village was finished.
The recovered property had moved from government cart to village hands under paperwork so clear it would survive inquiry.
Harrington closed his folder and made a short note for the observers, not looking at them for approval.
"This is the model," he said.
The senior observer, a thin man with an elegant moustache, watched the Farabis as they formed up to move to the next village—still only three, still quiet, still steady.
He spoke finally, as if admitting something reluctantly.
"They are disciplined," he said.
Harrington did not smile.
"They are predictable," he replied. "That is why they work."
The observer looked out at the villagers who were now carrying sacks home, not as looters, but as owners.
"And Mr. Jinnah?" he asked, careful.
Harrington's answer was immediate, almost rehearsed.
"Mr. Jinnah is not part of this," he said. "This is Crown restoration."
The observer nodded, satisfied by the phrase, but his eyes still moved toward the road as if expecting to see a shadow.
Jinnah remained absent.
Which was, in its own way, the most deliberate act of all.
Because the Crown was being taught a lesson it could accept only if it believed it was teaching itself:
Legitimacy did not come from fear alone.
It came from the rarest thing in Punjab—
A promise kept, in public, with receipts.