But down in the Palace Zeenut Maihl had been watching that white

streak of road also, and as the hours passed, her wild impatience

would let her watch it no longer. She paced up and down the Queen's

bastion like a caged tigress, leaving Hâfzan to take her place at the

lattice. No sign of an avenging army yet! Then the troopers' tale must

be true! The hour of decisive action had come, it was slipping past,

the King was in the hands of Ahsan-Oolah, and Elahi Buksh, whose face

was set both ways, like the physician's. And she, helpless, half in

disgrace, caged, veiled, screened, unable to lay hands on anyone! Oh!

why was she not a man! Why had she not a man to deal with! Her

henna-stained nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands, then

in sheer childish passion tore off her hampering veil and, rolling it

into a ball, flung it at the head of a drowsy eunuch in the outside

arcade--the nearest thing to a man within her reach.

"No sign yet, Hâfzan?" she asked fiercely.

"No sign, my Queen," replied Hâfzan, with an odd derisive smile. If

they did not come now, thought this woman with her warped nature, they

would come later on; come and put a rope round the necks of men who

had laid violent hands on women.

"Then I stop here no longer!" cried Zeenut Maihl recklessly; "I must

see somewhat of it or die. Quick, girls, my dhooli, I will go back to

my own rooms. 'Twill at least bear me through the crowd, and the

jogging will keep the blood from tingling from very stillness."

So through the tawdry, dirty, musky curtains a woman's fierce eye

watched the crowd hungrily, as the dhooli swung through it. A fierce

crowd too in its way, but lacking cohesion. Like the world without

those four rose-red walls, it was waiting for a master. And the man

who should have been master was taking cooling draughts, and composing

couplets, so her spies brought word. No hope from him till she could

lure him back from his vexation and put some of her own energy into

him. Who next was there likely to do her bidding? Her eye, taking in

all the strangeness of the scene, troopers stabling their horses in

the colonnades, sepoys bivouacking under the trees, courtiers hurrying

up and down the private steps, found none in all that crowd of

place-hunters, boasters, enthusiasts, whom she could trust. The King's

eldest son Mirza Moghul was the fiercest tempered of them all, the

only one whom she feared in any way; perhaps if she could get hold of

him----

As her dhooli swayed up the steps he was standing on them talking to

Mirza Khair Sultan. She could have put out her hand and touched him;

but even she did not dare convention enough for that. Nevertheless,

the sight of him determined her. If the King did not come back to her

by noon, she must lure the Mirza to her side.

"Thou art a fool, Pir-jee," she said petulantly to Hussan Askuri who,

as father confessor, had entrance to the womens' rooms and was

awaiting her. "Thou hast no grip on the King when I am absent. Canst

not even drive that slithering physician from his side?"

"Cooling draughts, seest thou, Pir-jee," put in Hâfzan maliciously,

"have tangible effects. Thy dreams----"

"Peace, woman!" interrupted the Queen sternly, "'tis no time for

jesting. Where sits the King now?"

"In the river balcony, Ornament-of-palaces," replied Fâtma glibly,

"where he is not to be disturbed these two hours, so the physician

says, lest the cooling draught----"

The Queen stamped her foot in sheer impotent rage. "I must see

someone. And Jewan Bukht, my son? why hath he not answered my

summons?"

"His Highness," put in Hâfzan gravely, "was, as I came by just now,

quarreling in his cups with his nephew, the princely Abool-Bukr,

regarding the Inspectorship-of-Cavalry; which office both desire--a

weighty matter----"

"Peace! she-devil!" almost screamed the Queen. "Can I not see, can I

not hear for myself, that thy sharp wits must forever drag the rotten

heart to light--thou wilt go too far, some day, Hâfzan, and then----"

"The Queen will have to find another scribe," replied Hâfzan meekly.

Zeenut Maihl glared at her, then rolled round into her cushions as if

she were in actual physical pain. And hark! From the Lahore gate, as

if nothing had happened, came the chime of noon. Noon! and nothing

done. She sat up suddenly and signed to Hâfzan for pen and ink. She

would wait no longer for the King; she would at least try the Mirza.

"'This, to the most illustrious the Mirza Moghul, Heir-Apparent by

right to the throne of Timoor,'" she dictated firmly, and Hâfzan

looked up startled. "Write on, fool," she continued; "hast never

written lies before? 'After salutation the Begum Zeenut Maihl,'"--the

humbler title came from her lips in a tone which boded ill for the

recipient of the letter if he fell into the toils,--"'seeing that in

this hour of importance the King is sick, and by order of physicians

not to be disturbed, would know if the Mirza, being by natural right

the King's vice-regent, desires the private seal to any orders

necessary for peace and protection. Such signet being in the hands of

the Queen'--nay, not that, I was forgetting--'the Begum.'"

She gave an angry laugh as she lay back among her cushions and bid

them send the letter forthwith. That should make him nibble. Not that

she had the signet--the King kept that on his own finger--but if the

Mirza came on pretense or rather in hopes of getting it? Why! then; if

the proper order was given and if she could insure the aid of men to

carry out her schemes, the signet should be got at somehow. The King

was old and frail; the storm and stress might well kill him.

So her thoughts ranged from one plot to another as she waited for an

answer. If this lure succeeded, she would but use the Heir-Apparent

for a time. What use was there in plotting for him? He could die, as

other heirs had died; and then the only person likely to put a spoke

in her wheel was Abool-Bukr. He was teaching his young uncle the first

pleasures of manhood, and might find it convenient to influence the

boy against her. It would be well therefore to get hold of him also.

That was not a hard task, and she sat up again without a moment's

hesitation and signed once more to Hâfzan.

"Thy best flourishes," she said with an evil sneer, "for it goes to a

rare scholar; to a fool for all that, who would have folk think

nephews visit their aunts from duty! 'This to Newâsi loving and

beloved, greeting. Consequent on the disturbances, the princely nephew

Abool-Bukr lieth senseless here in the Palace.' Stare not, fool!

senseless drunk he is by this time, I warrant. 'Those who have seen

him think ill of him.'" Here she broke off into malicious enjoyment of

her own wit. "Ay! and those who have but heard of him also! 'The

course of events, however, being in the hands of Heaven, will be duly

reported.'"

She coiled herself up again on the cushions, an insignificant square

homely figure draped in worn brocade and laden with tarnished jewelry;

ill-matched strings of pearls, flawed emeralds, diamonds without

sparkle. Yet not without a certain dignity, a certain symmetry of

purpose, harmonizing with the arched and frescoed room in which she

lay; a room beautiful in design and decoration, yet dirty,

comfortless, almost squalid.

"Nay! not my signature," she yawned. "I am too old a foe of the

scholars; but a smudge o' the thumb will do. If I know aught of aunts

and nephews, she will be too much flustered by the news to look at

seals. And have word sent to the Delhi gate that the Princess

Farkhoonda be admitted, but goes not forth again."

Her hard voice ceased; there was no sound in the room save that

strange hum from the gardens outside, which at this hour of the day

were generally wrapped in sun-drugged slumbers.

But the world beyond, toward which the old King's lusterless eyes

looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as

ever. Through the tracery-set archs showed yellow stretches of sand

and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-grass hiding the

slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the

blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer

sunlight. A row of _saringhi_ players squatted in the room behind the

balcony, thrumming softly, so as to hide that strange hum of life

which reached even here. For the King was writing a couplet and was in

difficulties with a rhyme for _cartouche_ (cartridge); since he was a

stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should

jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other

side of the _saringhies_. _Cartouche? Cartouche?_ Suddenly he sat up.

"Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!" he hesitated for an instant.

Hussan Askuri would be with the Queen, and no one ever admired his

couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And

what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just

meed of praise? "Stay," he repeated, "I will go myself." It was a

relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as

they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his

treasure, imagining her face when she heard it.

"Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahin

Jo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne."

A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people,

warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and--dog-anglicized--runs

thus:

"Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy,

The only weapon was a cartridge greasy."

"The Queen? Where is the Queen?" fumed the old man, when he found an

empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the

Great Moghul.

"She prays for the King's recovery," said Fâtma readily. "I will

inform her that her prayer is granted." But as she passed on her

errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for

Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So

how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with

exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest

son behind decorous screens, and that she was thanking Heaven piously

for having sent him back to her apron-string in the very nick of time.

Sent him, and Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within reach of her quick

wit.

"That is the best couplet my lord has done," she said superbly. "That

must be signed and sealed."

So must a paper be, which lay concealed in her bosom. And as she spoke

she drew the signet ring lovingly, playfully from the King's finger

and walked over to where the scribe sat crouched on the floor.

"Ink it well, Pir-jee," she said, keeping her back to the King; "the

impression must be as immortal as the verse."

Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double

sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all.

So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the

Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper

brought by the Palace Guards, and passed under the door, ordering its

instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the eight

dashed people's impudence and cursed their cheek! Yet, after the

laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that

river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many

times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave face had

grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon

bush. The black streak there would not fail them.

"In the King's name open!" The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself

this time, for the Palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if

they were to defend it, according to the Queen's idea, against all

corners, till there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter

of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, half-drunk,

wholly incapable, but full of valor; for a scout sent by the Queen had

returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of

Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pass

from lip to lip in the city.

Helpless!

The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge.

Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And

many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors

at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked

at each other with startled eyes.

Helpless! Helpless!

The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with

the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of

danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay

huddled helplessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak

of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain

of the eyes for a cloud of dust.

But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that

it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own.

"Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering

round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him

several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give

information to the people outside."

For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. "Scaling ladders?" he

echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes,

finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the Palace. "Oh!

by all means let them scale if they like."

Some of the Eight, hearing the reply, smiled grimly. By all means let

the flies walk into the parlor; for if that straight streak of road

was really going to remain empty, the fuller the four square walls

round the lemon bush could be, the better.

"That's them, sir," said one of the Eight cheerfully, as a grating

noise rose above the hum outside. "That's the grapnels." And as he

turned to his particular gun of the ten, he told himself that he would

nick the first head or two with his rifle and keep the grape for the

bunches. So he smiled at his own little joke and waited. All the Nine

waited, each to a gun, and of course there was one gun over, but, as

the head of them had said, that could not be helped. And so the

rifle-triggers clicked, and the stocks came up to the shoulders; and

then?--then there was a sort of laugh, and someone said under his

breath, "Well, I'm blowed!" And his mind went back to the streets of

London, and he wondered how many years it was since he had seen a

lamplighter. For up ropes and poles, on roofs and outhouses, somehow,

clinging like limpets, running like squirrels along the top of the

wall, upsetting the besiegers, monopolizing the ladders, was a rush,

not of attack but of escape! Let what fool who liked scale the wall

and come into the parlor of the Nine, those who knew the secret

of the lemon-bush were off. No safety there beside the Nine! No

life-insurance possible while that lay ready to their hand!

Would he ever see a lamplighter again? The trivial thought was with

the bearded man who stood by his gun, the real self in him, hidden

behind the reserve of courage, asking other questions too, as he

waited for the upward rush of fugitives to change into a downward rush

of foes worthy of good powder and shot.

It came at last--and the grape came too, mowing the intruders down in

bunches. And these were no mere rabble of the city. They were the pick

of the trained mutineers swarming over the wall to stand on the

outhouse roofs and fire at the Nine; and so, pressed in gradually from

behind, coming nearer and nearer, dropping to the ground in solid

ranks, firing in platoons; so by degrees hemming in the Nine, hemming

in the lemon-bush.

But the Nine were busy with the guns. They had to be served quickly,

and that left no time for thought. Then the smoke, and the flashes,

and the yells, and the curses, filled up the rest of the world for the

present.

"This is the last round, I'm afraid, sir; we shan't have time for

another," said a warning voice from the Nine, and the Head of them

looked round quietly. Not more than forty yards now from the guns;

barely time, certainly, unless they had had that other man! So he

nodded. And the last round pealed out as recklessly, as defiantly, as

if there had been a hundred to follow--and a hundred thousand--a

hundred million. But one of the gunners threw down his fuse ere his

gun recoiled, and ran in lightly toward the lemon-tree, so as to be

ready for the favor he had begged.

"We're about full up, sir," came the warning voice again, as the rest

of the Nine fell back amid a desultory rattle of small arms. The

tinkle of the last church bell, as it were, warning folk to hurry

up--a last invitation to walk into the parlor of the Nine.

"We're about full up, sir," came that one voice.

"Wait half a second," came another, and the Head-of-the-nine ran

lightly to that river bastion for a last look down the white streak

for that cloud of dust.

How sunny it was! How clear! How still! that world beyond the smoke,

beyond the flashes, beyond the deafening yells and curses. He gave one

look at it, one short look--only one--then turned to face his own

world, the world he had to keep. Full up indeed! No pyrotechnist could

hope for better audience in so small a place.

"Now, if you please!"

Someone in the thick of the smoke and the flashes heard the yells and

curses and raised his cap--a last salute, as it were, to the school

and schoolmaster. A final dismissal to the scholars--a thousand of

them or so--about to finish their lesson of what men can do to hold

their own. And someone else, standing beside the lemon-bush, bent over

that faithful black streak, then ran for dear life from the hissing of

that snake of fire flashing to the powder magazine.

A faint sob, a whispering gasp of horror, came from the thousand and

odd; but above it came a roar, a rush, a rending. A little puff of

white smoke went skyward first, and then slowly, majestically, a great

cloud of rose-red dust grew above the ruins, to hang--a corona

glittering in the slant sunbeams--over the school, the schoolmasters,

and the scholars.

It hung there for hours. To those who know the story it seems to hang

there still--a bloody pall for the many; for the Nine, a crown indeed.

CHAPTER V.

SUNSET.

"What's that?"

The question sprung to every lip; yet all knew the answer. The

magazine had saved itself.

But in the main-guard, not six hundred yards off, where the very

ground rocked and the walls shook, the men and women, pent up since

noon, looked at each other when the first shock was over, feeling that

here was the end of inaction. Here was a distinct, definite challenge

to Fate, and what would come of it? It was now close on to four

o'clock; the day was over, the darkness at hand. What would it bring

them? If Meerut, with its two thousand, was so sore bested that it

could not spare one man to Delhi, what could they, a mere handful,

hope for save annihilation?

Yet even Mrs. Seymour only clasped her baby closer, and said nothing.

For there was no lack of courage anywhere. And Kate, with another

child in her arms, paused as she laid it down, asleep at last, upon an

officer's coat, to feel a certain relief. If they were to fare thus,

that bitter self-reproach and agonizing doubt for vanished Sonny was

unavailing. His chance might well be better than theirs.

Well indeed, pent up as they were cheek-by-jowl with four hundred

unstable sepoys, and with the ominously rising hum of the unstable

city on their unprotected rear. Up on the Flagstaff Tower crowning

the extreme northern end of the Ridge, away from this hum, where

Brigadier Graves had gathered together the remaining women and

children, so as to guard them as best he could with such troops as he

had remaining--many of them too unstable to be trusted cityward--they

were in better plight. For they had the open country round them--a

country where folk could still go and come with a fair chance of

safety, since even the predatory tribes, always ready to take

advantage of disorder, were still waiting to see what master the day

would bring forth. And they had also the knowledge that something was

being done, that they were not absolutely passive in the hands of

Fate, after Dr. Batson started in disguise to summon that aid from

Meerut which would not come of itself. Above all, they had the

decision, they had the power to act; while down in the main-guard they

could but obey orders. Not that the Flagstaff Tower did much with this

advantage; for it was paralyzed by that straining of the eyes for a

cloud of dust upon the Meerut road which was the damnation of Delhi.

Yet even here that decisive roar, that corona of red dust brightening

every instant as the sun dipped to the horizon, brought the conviction

that something must be done at last. But what? Hampered by women and

children, what could they do? If, earlier in the day, they had sent

all the non-combatants off toward Kurnal or Meerut, with as many

faithful sepoys as they could spare, arming everybody from the arsenal

down by the river, they would have been free to make some forlorn

hope--free, for instance, to go down _en-masse_ to the main-guard and

hold it, if they could. That was what one man thought, who, seven

miles out from Delhi--returning from a reconnaissance of his own to

see if help were on the way--saw that little puff of smoke, heard the

roar, and watched the red corona grow to brightness.

But on the Ridge, men thought differently. The claims of those patient

women and children seemed paramount, and so it was decided to get back

the guns from the main-guard as a first step toward intrenching

themselves for the night at the tower. But the men in the main-guard

looked at each other in doubt when the order reached them. Was the

garrison going to be withdrawn altogether, leaving merely a forlorn

hope to keep the gate closed as long as possible against the outburst

of rabble, to whom it would be the natural and shortest route to

cantonments? If so, surely it would have been better to send the women

away first? Still the orders were clear, and so the gate was set wide

and the guns rumbled over the drawbridge under escort of a guard of

the 38th. That, at any rate, was good riddance of bad rubbish; though

the wisdom of sending the guns in such charge was doubtful. Yet how

could the little garrison have afforded to give up a single man even

of the still loyal 74th?--a company of whom had actually followed

their captain to the ruins of the magazine to see if they could do

anything, and returned, without a defaulter, to say that all was

confusion--the dead lying about in hundreds, the enemy nowhere.

"How did the men behave, Gordon?" asked their commandant anxiously,

getting his Captain into a quiet corner. And the two men, both beloved

of their regiment, both believing in it, both with a fierce, wild hope

in their hearts that such belief would be justified, looked into each

other's faces for a moment in silence. There was a shadowing branch of

neem overhead as they stood in the sunlight. A squirrel upon it was

chippering at the glitter of their buckles; a kite overhead was

watching the squirrel.

"I think they hesitated, sir," said Captain Gordon quietly.

Major Abbott turned hastily, and looked through the open gate, past

the lumbering guns, to the open country lying peaceful, absolutely

peaceful, beyond. If he could only have got his men there--away from

the disloyalty of the 38th guard, the sullen silence of the 54th--if

he could only have given them something to do! If he could only have

said "Follow me!" they would have followed.

And Kate Erlton, who, weary of the deadly inaction in the room above,

had drifted down to the courtyard, stood close to the archway looking

through it also, thinking, not for the first time that weary day, of

Alice Gissing's swift, heroic death with envy. It was something to die

so that brave men turned away without a word when they heard of it.

But as she thought this, the look on young Mainwaring's face as he

stood with others listening to her story, came back to her. It had

haunted her all day, and more than once she had sought him out, not

for condolence--he was beyond that--but for a trivial word or two;

just a human word or two to show him remembered by the living. And now

the impulse came to her again, and she drifted back--for there was no

hurry in that deadly, deadly inaction--to find him leaning listlessly

against a wall digging holes in the dry dust idly with the point of

his drawn sword for want of something better whereupon to use it. Such

a young face, she thought, to be so old in its chill anger and

despair! She went over to him swiftly, her reserve gone, and laid her

hand upon his holding the sword.

"Don't fret so, dear boy," she said, and the fine curves of her mouth

quivered. "She is at peace."

He looked at her in a blaze of fierce reproach. "At peace! How dare

you say so? How dare you think so--when she lies--there."

He paused, impotent for speech before his unbridled hatred, then

strode away indignantly from her pity, her consolation. And as she

looked after him her own gentler nature was conscious of a pride,

almost a pleasure in the thought of the revenge which would surely be

taken sooner or later, by such as he, for every woman, every child

killed, wounded--even touched. She was conscious of it, even though

she stood aghast before a vision of the years stretching away into an

eternity of division and mutual hate.

A fresh stir at the gate roused her, a quick stir among a group of

senior officers, recruited now by two juniors who had earned their

right to have their say in any council of war. These were two

artillery subalterns, begrimed from head to foot, deafened,

disfigured, hardly believing in their own safety as yet. Looking

at each other queerly, wondering if indeed they could be the

Head-of-the-nine and his second in command, escaped by a miracle

through the sally port in the outer wall of the magazine, and so come

back by the drawbridge, as Kate Erlton had come, to join the refugees

in the main-guard. Was it possible? And--and--what would the world

say? That thought must have been in their minds. And, no doubt, a vain

regret that they were under orders now, as they listened while Major

Abbott read out those just received from cantonments. Briefly, to take

back the whole of the loyal 74th and leave the post to the 38th and

the 54th--about a hundred and fifty openly disloyal men.

A sort of stunned silence fell on the little group, till Major

Paterson of the 54th said quietly, officially to Major Abbott. "If you

leave, sir, I shall have to abandon the post; I could not possibly

hold it. Some of my men who have returned to the colors here might

possibly fight were we to stick together. But with retreat, and the

example of the 38th before them, they would not. I have, or I should

have, lives in my charge when you are gone, and I warn you that I must

use my own discretion in doing the best I can to protect them."

"Paterson is right, Abbott," put in the civil officer, who had stuck

to his charge of the Treasury all day, and repelled the only attack

made by the enemy during all those long hours. "If I am to do any

good, I must have men who will fight. I don't trust the 54th; and the

38th are clearly just biding their time. This retreat might have done

six hours ago--might do now if it were general; but I doubt it."

"Anyhow," put in another voice, "if the 74th are to go, they should

take the women with them--they couldn't fare worse than they are sure

to do here. I don't think the Brigadier can realize----"

"Couldn't you refer it?" asked someone; but the Major shook his head.

The orders were clear; no doubt there was good cause for them. Anyhow

they must be obeyed.

"Then as civil officer in charge of the Government Treasury, I ask for

quarter-of-an-hour's law. If by then----"

The eager voice paused. Whether the owner thought once more of that

expected cloud of dust, or whether he meant to gallop to cantonments

in hope of getting the order rescinded is doubtful. Whether he went or

stayed doubtful also. But the fifteen minutes of respite were given,

during which the preparations for departure went on, the men of the

38th aiding in them with a new alacrity. Their time had come. Only a

few minutes now before the last fear of a hand-to-hand fight would be

over, the last chance of the master turning and rending them gone. It

lingered a bit, though, for rumbling wheels came over the drawbridge

once more, and voices clamored to be let in. The guns had returned.

The gunners had deserted, said the escort insolently, and guns being

in such case useless, they had preferred to rejoin their brethren; as

for their officer, he had preferred to go on.

Kate Erlton, drawn from the inner room once again by the creaking of

the gates, saw a look pass between one or two of the officers. And

there stood the 74th, smart and steady, waiting for marching orders.

No need to close the gates again, since time was up; the fifteen

minutes had slipped by, bringing no help, just as the long hours had

dragged by uselessly. So the gate stood open to the familiar, friendly

landscape, all aglow with the rays of the setting sun. Close at hand,

within a stone's throw, lay the tall trees and dense flowering

thickets of the Koodsia gardens, where fugitives might have found

cover. To the left were the ravines and rocks of the Ridge, fatal to

mounted pursuit, and in the center lay the road northward, leading

straight to the Punjab, straight from that increasing roar of the

city. There had been no attack as yet; but every soul within the

main-guard knew for a certainty that the first hint of retreat would

bring it.

How could it do otherwise? The decisive answer of the magazine, with

its thousand-and-odd good reasons against the belief that the master

was helpless, had died away. The refuse and rabble of the city had

ceased to wander awestruck among the ruins, murmuring, "What tyranny

is here?"--that passive, resigned comment of the weaker brother in

India. In the Palace, too, they had recovered the shock of the mean

trick of the Nine, who, however, must, thank Heaven, be all dead too.

So as the gate stood open, and the sun streamed through it into the

wide courtyard, glinting on the buckles and bayonets, Major Abbott's

voice rose quietly. "Are you ready, Gordon?" The drawbridge was clear

of the guns now, clear of everything save the slant shadows.

"All ready, sir," came the quiet reply.

"Number!" called the Commandant, but a voice at his right hand pleaded

swiftly. "Don't wait for sections, Huzoor! Let us go!" And another at

his left whispered, "For God's sake, Huzoor! quick; get them out

quick!"

Major Abbott hesitated a second, only a second. The voices were the

voices of good men and true, whom he could trust. "Fours about! Quick

march!" he corrected, and a sort of sigh of relief ran down the

regiment as it swung into position and the feet started rhythmically.

Action at last!--at long last!

"Good-by, old chap," said someone cheerfully, but Major Abbott did not

turn. "Good-by! Good-by!" came voices all round; steady, quiet voices,

as the disciplined tramp echoed on the drawbridge, and a bar of

scarlet coats grew on the rise of the white road outside.

"Good-by, Gordon! Good-by!"

The tall figure in its red and gold was under the very arch, shining,

glittering in the sunlight streaming through it. Another step or two

and he would have been beyond it. But the time for good-by had come.

The time for which the 38th had been waiting all day. He threw up his

arms and fell dead from his horse without a cry, shot through the

heart. The next instant the gate was closed, its creaking smothered in

the wild, senseless cry "To kill, to kill, to kill," in a wild,

senseless rattle of musketry. For there was really no hurry; the

handful of Englishmen were helpless. Major Abbott and his men might

clamor for re-entry at the gate if they chose. They could not get in.

Nor could the remnant of the 74th, deprived of its loyal companions,

of the only two men who seemed to have controlled it, do anything. And

the 54th were helpless also by their own act; for they had pushed

Major Paterson through the gate before it closed.

So there was no one left even to try and stem the tide. No one to

check that beast-like cry.

"_Mâro! Mâro! Mâro!_"

But, in truth, it would have been a hopeless task. The game was up;

the only chance was flight. And two, foreseeing this for the last

hour, had already made good theirs by jumping from an embrasure in the

rampart into the ditch, while one, uninjured by the fall, had

scrambled up the counter-scarp, and was running like a hare for those

same thickets of the Koodsia.

"Come on! Come on!" cried others, seeing their success. And then? And

then the cries and piteous screams of women reminded them of something

dearer than life, and they ran back under a hail of bullets to that

upper room which they had forgotten for the moment. And somehow,

despite the cry of kill, despite the whistling bullets, they managed

to drag its inmates to the embrasure. But--oh! pathos and bathos of

poor humanity! making smiles and tears come together--the women who

had stared death in the face all day without a wink, stood terrified

before a twenty-feet scramble with a rope of belts and handkerchiefs

to help them. It needed a round shot to come whizzing a message of

certain death over their heads to give them back a courage which never

failed again in the long days of wandering and desperate need which

was theirs ere some of them reached safety.

But Kate neither hesitated nor jumped. She had not the chance of doing

either. For that longing look of hers through the open gates had

tempted her to creep along the wall nearer to them; so that the rush

to close them jammed her into a corner against a door, which yielded

slightly to her weight. Quick enough to grasp her imminent danger, she

stooped instantly to see if the door could be made to yield further.

And that stoop saved her life, by hiding her from view behind the

crowd. The next moment she had pushed aside a log which had evidently

rolled from some pile within, and slipped sideways into a dark

outhouse. She was safe so far. But was it worth it? The impulse to go

out again and brave merciful death rose keen, until with a flash, the

memory of that escape through the crowd came back to her; she seemed

to hear the changing ready voice of the man who held her, to feel his

quick instinctive grip on every chance of life.

Chance! There was a spell in the very word. A minute after logs jammed

the door again, and even had it been set wide, none would have guessed

that a woman, full of courage, ay! and hope, crouched behind the piles

of brushwood. So she lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to

say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others,

what was passing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused

yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of "_Deen! Deen!_" or

"_Jai Kali ma!_" For faith is one of the two great passions which make

men militant, The other, sex. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights

silently, giving and asking no words--only works.

So fought young Mainwaring, who, with his back to that same wall

against which Kate had found him leaning, was using his sword to a

better purpose than digging holes in the dust; or rather had adopted a

new method of doing the task. He had not tried to escape as the others

had done; not from superior courage, but because he never even thought

of it. When he was free to choose, how could he think of leaving those

devils unpunished, leaving them unchecked to touch her dead body,

while he lived? He gave a little faint sob of sheer satisfaction as he

felt the first soft resistance, which meant that his sword had cut

into flesh and blood; for all his vigorous young life made for death,

nothing but death. Was not she dead yonder?

So, after a bit, it seemed to him there was too little of it

there--that it came slowly, with his back to the wall and only those

who cared to go for him within reach--for the crowd was dense, too

dense for loading and firing. Dense with a hustling, horrified wonder,

a confused prodding of bayonets. So, without a sound, he charged

ahead, hacking, hewing, never pausing, not even making for freedom,

but going for the thickest silently.

"_Amuk! Sayia! A-muk!_" The yell that he was mad, possessed, rang

hideously as men tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape,

their hurry to have at this wild beast, this devil, this horror. And

they were right. He was possessed. He was life instinct with death;

filled with but one desire--to kill, or to be killed quickly.

"_Saiya! Amuk! Saiya!_--out of his way--out of his way! _Amuk! Saiya!_

Fate is with him! The gods are with him. _Saiya! Amuk!_"

So, by chance, not method; so by sheer terror as well as hacking and

hewing, the tall figure found itself, with but a stagger or two,

outside the wooden gates, out on the city road, out among the gardens

and the green trees. And then, "Hip, hip, hurray!" His ringing cheer

rose with a sort of laugh in it. For yonder was her house!--her house!

"Hip, hip, hurray!" As he ran, as he had run in races at school, his

young face glad, the fingers on the triggers behind him wavered in

sheer superstitious funk, and two troopers coming down the road

wheeled back as from a mad dog. The scarlet coat with its gold

epaulettes went crashing into a group red-handed with their spoil, out

of it impartially into a knot of terrified bystanders, while down the

lane left behind it by the hacking and hewing came bullet after

bullet; the fingers on the triggers wavered, but some found a billet.

One badly. He stumbled in the dust and his left arm fell oddly. But

the right still hacked and hewed as he ran, though the crowd lessened;

though it grew thin, too thin for his purpose; or else his sight was

failing. But there, to the right, the devils seemed thicker again.

"Hip, hip, hooray!" No! trees. Only trees to hew--a garden--perhaps

the garden about her house--then, "Hip, hip----"

He fell headlong on his face, biting the soft earth in sheer despite

as he fell.

"Don't touch him, brothers!" said one of the two or three who had

followed at a distance, as they might have followed a mad dog, which

they hoped others would meet and kill. "Provoke him not, or the demon

possessing him may possess us. 'Tis never safe to touch till they have

been dead a watch. Then the poison leaves them. Krishnjee, save us!

Saw you how he turned our lead?"

"He has eaten mine, I'll swear," put in another sepoy boastfully,

pointing gingerly with his booted foot to a round scorched hole in the

red coat. "The muzzle was against him as I fired."

"And mine shall be his portion too," broke in a new arrival

breathlessly, preparing to fire at the prostrate foe; but the first

speaker knocked aside the barrel with an oath.

"Not while I stand by, since devils choose the best men. As 'tis,

having women in our houses 'twere best to take precautions." He

stooped down as he spoke, and muttering spells the while, raised a

little heap of dust at the lad's head and feet and outstretched

arms--a little cross of dust, as it were, on which the young body lay

impaled.

"What is't?" asked a haughty-looking native officer, pausing as he rode

by.

"'Tis a hell-doomed who went possessed, and Dittu makes spells to keep

him dead," said one.

"Fool!" muttered the man. "He was drunk, likely. They get like that,

the cursed ones, when they take wine." And he spat piously on the red

coat as he passed on. So they left the lad there lying face down in

the growing gloom, hedged round by spells to keep him from harming

women. Left him for dead.

But the scoffer had been right. He was drunk, but with the Elixir of

Life and Love which holds a soul captive from the clasp of Death for a

space. So, after a time, the cross of dust gave up its victim; he

staggered to his feet again; and so, tumbling, falling, rising to fall

again, he made his way to the haven where he would be, to the side of

a dead woman.

And the birds, startled from their roosting-places by the stumbling,

falling figure, waited, fluttering over the topmost branches for it to

pass, or paused among them to fill up the time with a last twittering

song of goodnight to the day; for the sun still lingered in the

heat-haze on the horizon as if loath to take its glow from that corona

of red dust above the northern wall of Delhi, mute sign of the only

protest made as yet by the master against mutiny.

And now he had left the city to its own devices. The rebels were free

to do as they liked. The three thousand disciplined soldiers, more or

less, might have marched out, had they chose, and annihilated the

handful of loyal men about the Flagstaff Tower. But it was

sunset--sunset in Rumzân. And the eyes of thousands, deprived even of

a drop of water since dawn, were watching the red globe sink in the

West, hungrily, thirstily; their ears were attuned but to one

sound--the firework signal from the big mosque that the day's fast was

over. The very children on the roofs were watching, listening, so as

to send the joyful news that day was done, in shrill voices to their

elders below, waiting with their water-pots ready in their hands.

Then, in good truth, there was no set purpose from one end of the city

to another. From the Palace to the meanest brothel which had belched

forth its vilest to swell the tide of sheer rascality which had ebbed

and flowed all day, the one thought was still, "What does it mean? How

long will it last? Where is the master?"

So men ate and drank their fill first, then looked at each other

almost suspiciously, and drifted away to do what pleased them best.

Some to the Palace to swell the turmoil of bellicose loyalty to the

King--loyalty which sounded unreal, almost ridiculous, even as it was

spoken. Others to plunder while they could. The bungalows had long

since been rifled, the very church bells thrown down and broken; for

the time had been ample even for wanton destruction. But the city

remained. And while shops were being looted inside, the dispossessed

Goojurs were busy over Metcalfe House, tearing up the very books in

their revenge. The Flagstaff Tower lay not a mile away, almost

helpless against attack. But there was no stomach for cold steel in

Delhi on the 11th of May, 1857. No stomach for anything except safe

murder, safe pillaging. Least of all was it to be found in the Palace,

where men had given the rein to everything they possessed--to their

emotions, their horses, their passions, their aspirations. Stabling

some in the King's gardens, some in dream-palaces, some in pigstyes of

sheer brutality. Weeping maudlin tears over heaven-sent success, and

boasting of their own prowess in the same breath; squabbling insanely

over the partition of coming honors and emoluments.

Abool-Bukr, drunk as a lord, lurched about asserting his intention of

being Inspector-General of the King's cavalry, and not leaving man,

woman, or child of the hell-doomed alive in India. For he had been

right when he had warned Newâsi to leave him to his own life, his own

death; when he had shrunk from the inherited bloodstains on his hands,

the inherited tinder in his breast. It had caught fire with the first

spark, and there was fresh blood on his hands: the blood of a Eurasian

boy who had tried to defend his sister from drunken kisses. Someone in

the melée had killed the girl and finished the boy: the Prince himself

being saved from greater crime by tumbling into the gutter and setting

his nose a-bleeding, a catastrophe which had sent him back to the

Palace partially sobered.

But Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, safe housed in the rooms kept for

honored visitors, knew nothing of this, knew little even of the

disturbances; for she had been a close prisoner since noon--a prisoner

with servants who would answer no questions, with trays of jewels and

dresses as if she had been a bride. She sat in a flutter, trying to

piece out the reason for this kidnaping. Was she to be married by

force to some royal nominee? But why to-day? Why in all this turmoil,

unless she was required as a bribe. The arch-plotter was capable of

that. But who? One thing was certain, Abool-Bukr could know nothing of

this--he would not dare--and suddenly the hot blood tingled through

every vein as she lay all unconsciously enjoying the return to the

easeful idleness and luxury she had renounced. But if he did dare? if

it was not mere anger which brought bewilderment to heart and brain,

as she hid her face from the dim light which filtered in through the

lattice--the dim, scented, voluptuous light from which she had fled

once to purer air?

And not a hundred yards away from where she was trying to steady her

bounding pulse, Abool-Bukr himself was bawling away at his favorite

love-song to a circle of intimates, all of whom he had already

provided with places on the civil list. His head was full of promises,

his skin as full of wine as it could be, and he not be a mere wastrel

unable to enjoy life. For Abool-Bukr gave care to this; since to be

dead drunk was sheer loss of time.

"Ah mistress rare, divine,

Thy lover like a vine

With tendril arms entwine."

Here his effort to combine gesture with song nearly caused him to fall

off the steps, and roused a roar of laughter from some sepoys

bivouacking under the trees hard by. But Mirza Moghul, passing hastily

to an audience with the King, frowned. To-day, when none knew what

might come, the Queen might have her way so far; but this idle

drunkard must be got rid of soon. He would offend the pious to begin

with, and then he could not be trusted. Who could trust a man who had

been known to lure back his hawk because a bird's gay feathers shone

in the sunshine?

But Ahsan-Oolah, dismissed from feeling the royal pulse once more, by

the Mirza's audience, paused as he passed to recommend a cooling

draught if the Inspector-General of Cavalry wanted to keep his head

clear. It was the physician's panacea for excitement of all kinds. But

an exhibition of steel would have done better on the 11th of May.

There was no one, however, to administer it to Delhi, and even the

refugees in the Flagstaff Tower were beginning to give up hope of its

arriving from Meerut. Those in the storehouse at Duryagunj still clung

to the belief that succor must come somehow; but Kate Erlton, behind

the wood-pile, knew that her hope lay only in herself.

For how could Jim Douglas, as he more than once passed through the now

open and almost deserted Cashmere gate, in the hope, or rather the

fear, of finding some trace of her, know that she was hidden within a

few yards of him? or, how could she distinguish the sound of his

horse's hoofs from the hundreds which passed?

She must have escaped with the others, he concluded, as he galloped

toward the cantonments to see if she were there. But she was not. He

had failed again, he told himself; failed through no fault of his own;

for who could have foretold that madness of retreat from the gate?

So now, there was nothing to be done in Delhi save gather what

information he could, give decent burial--if he could--to Alice

Gissing's body, and, if no troops arrived before dawn, leave the city.

CHAPTER VI.

DUSK.

"I entreat you to leave, sir. Believe me, there is nothing else to be

done now. It will be dark in half an hour, and we shall need every

minute of the night to reach Kurnal."

It was said openly now by many voices. It had been hinted first when,

the corona of red dust having just sprung to hide the swelling white

dome of the distant mosque, a dismal procession had come slowly up the

steep road to the tower with a ghastly addition to the little knot of

white faces there--slowly, slowly, the drivers of the oxen whacking

and jibing at them as if the cart held logs or refuse, as if the

driving of it were quite commonplace. Yet in a way the six bodies of

English gentlemen it held were welcome additions; since it was

something to see a dear face even when it is dead. But they were

fateful additions, making the disloyal 38th regiment, posted furthest

from the Tower--partly commanded by it and the guns, in case of

accident--shift restlessly. If others had done such work, ought not

they to be up and doing? And now another procession came filing up

from the city--the two guns returning from the Cashmere gate. They

came on sullenly, slowly, yet still they came on; another few minutes

and the refugees would have been the stronger, the chances of mutiny

weaker. The 38th saw this. Their advanced picket rushed out, drove off

the gunners and the officers, and, fixing bayonets, forced the drivers

to wheel and set off down the road again at a trot. And down the road,

commanded by other guns, they went unchecked; for the refugees did not

dare to give the order to fire, lest it should be disobeyed. The

effect, we read, would probably have been "that the guns would have

been swung round and fired on the orderers; and so not an European

would have escaped to tell the tale; this catastrophe, however, was

mercifully averted and the crisis passed over." It reads strangely,

but once more, there were women and children to think of. And few men

are strong enough to say, much less set it down in black and white as

John Nicholson did, that the protection "of women and children in some

crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a

consideration at all."

Still, it began to be patent to all that there was little good in

remaining in a place where they did not dare to defend themselves.

There were carriages and horses ready; the road to Karnal was still

fairly safe. Would it not be better to retreat? But the Brigadier held

out. He had, in deference partly to others, wholly for the sake of his

helpless charges, weakened the city post. Why should he have done that

if he meant to abandon his own? Then he was an old sepoy officer who

had served boy and man in one regiment, rising to its command at last,

and he was loath to believe that the 38th regiment, which had been

specially commended to him by his own, would turn against him, if only

he were free to handle it.

And this hope gained color from the fact, that to him personally and

to his direct orders, the regiment was still cheerfully obedient.

So the waiting went on, and there were no signs of the 74th returning.

What had happened? Fresh disaster? The voices urging retreat grew

louder.

"Have it your own way, gentlemen," said the Brigadier at last. "The

women and children had better go, at any rate, and they will need

protection; so let all retire who will, and in what way seems best to

them. I stay here."

So on foot, on horseback, in carriages, the exodus began forthwith;

hastening more rapidly when the first man to jump from the embrasure

at the Cashmere gate arrived with that tale of hopeless calamity.

But still the Brigadier refused to join the rout. He had been hanging

on the skirts of Hope all day, trying, wisely or unwisely, to shield

women and children behind that frail shelter. So he had been tied hand

and foot. Now he would be free. True! the mystery of oncoming dusk

made that red city in the distance loom larger, but a handful of

desperate men unhampered, with plenty of ammunition, might hold such a

post as the Flagstaff Tower till help arrived. He meant to try it, at

any rate. Then nearly half of the 74th had got away safely--they were

long in turning up certainly--but when they came they would form a

nucleus. The 54th were not all bad, or they would not have saved their

Major. Even the 38th, if they could once be got away from the sight of

weakness, from that ghastly cart with its mute witness to successful

murder, might respond to a familiar commonplace order. They were

creatures of habit, with drill born in the blood, bred in the bone.

"I stay here," he said shortly. Said it again, even when neither the

escaped officers nor men turned up. Said it again, when the guns

rolled off toward Meerut, leaving him face to face with a sprinkling

of the 74th and 54th, and the mass of the 38th, sullen, but still

obedient.

The sun, now some time set, had left a flaming pennant in the sky,

barring it low down on the horizon with a blood-red glow marking the

top of the dust-haze, and the quick chill of color which in India

comes with the lack of sunlight, even while its heat lingers to the

touch, had fallen upon all things--upon the red Ridge, upon the

distant line of trees marking the canal, upon the level plain between

them where all the familiar landmarks of cantonment life still showed

clearly, despite the darkening sky. Guard-rooms, lines, bells-of-arms,

wide parade-grounds--all the familiar surroundings of a sepoy's life,

and behind them that red flare of a day that was done.

"There is no use, sir, in stopping longer," said the Brigade-major,

almost compassionately, to the figure which sat its horse steadfastly,

but with a despondent droop of the shoulders.

"No possible use, sir," echoed the Staff Doctor kindly. The three were

facing westward, for that vain hope of help from the east had been

given up at last; and behind them, barely audible, was the faint hum

of the distant city. A shaft of cormorants flying jheel-ward with

barbed arrow head, trailed across the purpling sky; below them the red

pennant was fading steadily. The day was done. But to one pair of eyes

there seemed still a hope, still a last appeal to something beyond

east or west.

"Bugler! sound the assembly!"

The Brigadier's voice rang sharp over the plain, and was followed,

quick as an echo, quick from that habit of obedience on which so much

depended, by the cheerful notes.

"Come--to the co-lors! Come quick, come all--come quick, come

all--come quick! Quick! Come to the colors!"

Last appeal to honor and good faith, to memory and confidence. But

they had passed with the day. Yet not quite, for as the rocks and

stones, the distant lines, the familiar landmarks gave back the call,

a solitary figure, trim and smart in the uniform of the loyal 74th,

fell in and saluted.

In all that wide plain one man true to his salt, heroic utterly,

standing alone in the dusk. A nameless figure, like many another hero.

Yet better so, when we remember that but a few hours before his

regiment had _volunteered to a man_ against their comrades and their

country! So sepoy----, of company----, can stand there, outlined

against the dying day upon the parade-ground at Delhi, as a type of

others who might have stood there also, but for the lack of that cloud

of dust upon the Meerut road.

Brigadier Graves wheeled his horse slowly northward; but at the sight

the sepoys of the 38th, still friendly to him personally, crowded

round him urging speed. It was no place for him, they said. No place

for the master.

Palpably not. It was time, indeed, for the thud of retreating hoofs to

end the incident, so far as the master was concerned; the actual

finale of the tragic mistake being a disciplined tramp, as the sepoy

who had fallen in at the last Assembly fell out again, at his own word

of command, and followed the master doggedly. He was killed fighting

for us soon afterward.

"God be praised!" said the 38th, as with curious deliberation they

took possession of the cantonments. "That is over! He has gone in

safety, and we have kept the promise given to our brothers of the 56th

not to harm him." So, joined by their comrades from the city, they set

guards and gave out rations, with double and treble doses of rum.

Played the master, in fact, perfectly; until, in the darkness, a

rumble arose upon the road, and one-half of the actors fled cityward

incontinently and the other half went to bed in their huts like good

boys. But it was not the troops from Meerut at last. It was only their

old friends the guns, once more brought back from the fugitives by

comrades who had finally decided to stand by the winning side.

So the question has once more to be asked, "What would have happened,

if, even at that eleventh hour, there really _had_ been a cloud of

dust on the Meerut road?"

As it was, confidence and peace were restored. In the city they

had never been disturbed. It seemed weary, bewildered by the

topsy-turvydom of the day, desirous chiefly of sleep and dreams. So

that Kate Erlton, peering out through a chink in the wood-store, felt

that if she were ever to escape from the slow starvation which stared

her in the face, she could choose no better time than this, when

traffic had ceased, and the moon had not yet risen. She had settled

that her best chance lay in creeping along the wall at first, then,

taking advantage of the gardens, cutting across to that same

sally-port through which the heroes of the magazine had told her they

had made their escape. She did not know the exact situation, but she

could surely find it. Besides, the ruins would most likely be

deserted, and the other gates of the city, even if they were not

closed for the night, as the gate here was, would be guarded. Once out

of the city, she meant to make for the Flagstaff Tower; for, of

course, she knew nothing of its desertion.

So she set the door ajar softly, and crept out. And as she did so, the

whiteness of her own dress, even in the dense blackness, startled her,

and roused the trivial wish that she had put on her navy-blue cotton

instead, as she had meant to do that day. Strange! how a mere

chance--the word was like a spur always, and she crept along the wall,

hoping that the smoking, flaring fire of refuse in the opposite

corner, round which the guard were sitting, so as to be free of

mosquitoes, might dazzle their eyes. It was her only chance, however,

so she must risk it. Then suddenly, under her foot, she felt something

long, curved, snakelike. It was all she could do not to scream; but

she set her teeth, and trod down hard with all her strength, her heart

beating wildly in the awful suspense. But nothing struck her, there

was no movement. Had she killed it? Her hand went down in the dark

with a terror in it lest her touch should light on the head--perhaps

within reach of the fangs. But she forced herself to the touch,

telling herself she was a coward, a fool.

Thank Heaven! no snake after all, only a rope. A rope that must have

been used for tethering a horse, for here under her foot was straw,

rustling horribly. No! not now--that was something soft. A blanket; a

horse's double blanket, dark as the darkness itself. Here was a

chance, indeed. She caught it up and paused deliberately in the

darkest corner of the square, to slip off shoes and stockings,

petticoats and bodice; so, in the scantiest of costumes, winding the

long blanket round her, as a skirt and veil in ayah's fashion. Her

face could be hidden by a modest down-drop over it, her white hands

hidden away by the modest drawing of a fold across her mouth. Her

feet, then, were the only danger, and the dust would darken them. She

must risk that anyhow. So, boldly, she slipped out of the corner, and

made for the gate, remembering to her comfort that it was not England

where a lonely woman might be challenged all the more for her

loneliness. In this heathen land, that down-dropped veil hedged even a

poor grass-cutter's wife about with respect. What is more, even if she

were challenged, her proper course would be to be silent and hurry on.

But no one challenged her, and she passed on into the denser shadows

of the church garden to regain her breath; for it had gone somehow.

Why, she knew not; she had not felt frightened. Then the question

came, what next? Get to the magazine, somehow; but the strain of

looking forward seemed far worse than the actual doing, so she went on

without settling anything, save that she would avoid roads, and give

the still smoking roofless bungalows as wide a birth as possible,

lest, in the dark, she should come on some dead thing--a friend

perhaps. And with the thought came that of Alice Gissing. The house

lay right on her path to the magazine. Surely she must be near it now.

Was that the long sweep of its roof against the sky? If she could see

so much, the moon must be rising, and she could have no time to lose.

As she crept along through the garden, she wondered why the bungalow

had not been burned like the others. Perhaps the ayah's friends had

saved it, or, perhaps, there had not been much to attract them in the

little hired house. Or, perhaps----

Hark! She crouched back, from voices close beside her, and doubled a

bit; but they seemed to follow her. And straight ahead the trees

ended, and she must brave the open space by the house itself; unless,

indeed, she slipped by the row of servant's houses to the veranda, and

so--through the rooms--gain the further side. Or she might hide in the

house till these voices passed, There they were again! She made a

breathless dash for the shadow, ran on till she found the veranda, and

deciding to hide for a time, passed in at the first door--the door of

the room where she had left Alice Gissing lying dead a few hours

before. But it was too dark, as yet, to see if she lay there still,

too dark to see even if the house had been plundered. It must have

been, however, for the very floor-cloths were gone; the concrete

struck cold to her feet. And a sudden terror at the darkness, the

emptiness, coming over her, she passed on rapidly to the faintly

glimmering square of the further door, seen through the intervening

rooms. There were three of them; bedroom, drawing room, dining room,

set in a row in Indian fashion, all leading into each other, all

opening on to the veranda; the two end ones opening also into the side

veranda. She could get out again, therefore, by this further door. But

it was bolted. She undid the bolts, only to find it hasped on the

outside. A feeling of being trapped seized upon her. She ran to the

other door. Hasped also. The drawing-room door? Firmer even than the

others. But what a fool she was to feel so frightened, when she could

always go out as she had come in when the voices had passed. She stole

back softly, knowing they must be just outside, and almost fancying,

in her alarm, that she heard a step in the veranda. But there was the

glimmering square of escape, open. No! shut too! shut from the

outside.

Had they seen her and shut the door? And there, indeed, were

footsteps! Loud footsteps and voices coming up the long flight of

steps which led to the veranda from the road. Coming straight, and she

locked in, helpless.

She threw up her hands involuntarily at a bright flash in the veranda.

Was it lightning? No! a pistol shot, a quick curse, a fall. A yell of

rage, a rush of those feet upon the steps, and then another flash,

another, and another! More curses and a confused clashing! She stood

as if turned to stone, listening. Hark! down the steps, surely, this

time, another rush, a cry, a scuffle, a fall. Then, loud and

unmistakable, a laugh! Then silence.

Merciful Heavens! what was it? What had happened? She shook at the

door gently, but still there was silence. Then, gripping the woodwork,

she tried to peer out. But she could only see the bit of veranda in

front of her which, being latticed in and hung with creepers, was very

dark. The rest was invisible from within. She leaned her ear on the

glass and listened. Was that a faint breathing? "Who's there?" she

cried softly; but there was no answer. She sank down on the floor in

sheer bewilderment and tried to think what to do, and after a time, a

faint glimmer of the rising moon aiding her, she went round to every

door and tried it again. All locked inside and out. And now she could

see that the house had been pillaged to the uttermost. There was

literally nothing left in it. Nothing to aid her fingers if she tried

to open the doors. By breaking the upper panes of glass, of course,

she could undo the top bolt, but how was she to reach the bottom ones

behind the lower panels? And why? why had they been locked? Who had

locked the one by which she had come in? What was there that needed

protection in that empty house. Was there by chance someone else?

Then, suddenly, the remembrance of what she had left lying in the end

room hours before came back to her. She had forgotten it utterly in

her alarm and she crept back to see if Alice Gissing still kept her

company. The bed was gone, but by the steadily growing glimmer of the

moon she could see something lying on the floor in the very center of

the room. Something strangely orderly, with a look of care and

tidiness about it; but not white--and her dress had been white. Kate

knelt down beside it and touched the still figure gently. What had it

been covered with? Some sort of network, fine--silken--crimson. An

officer's sash surely! And now her eyes becoming accustomed to what

lay before them, and the light growing, she saw that the curly head

rested on an officer's scarlet coat. The gold epaulettes were arranged

neatly on either side the delicate ears so as not to touch them. Who

had done this? Then that step she had thought she heard in the veranda

must have been a real one. Someone must have been watching the dead

woman.

She was at the door in an instant rapping at a pane, "Herbert!

Herbert! are you there? Herbert! Herbert!" He might have done this

thing. He might have come over from Meerut, for he had loved the dead

woman, he had loved her dearly.

But there was no answer. Then wrapping the blanket round her hand she

dashed it through the pane, and removing the glass, managed to crane

out a little. She could see better so. Was that someone, or only a

heap of clothes in the shadow of the corner by the inner wall? By this

time the moonlight was shining white on the orange-trees on the

further side of the road. She could see beyond them to the garden, but

nothing of the road itself, nothing of the steep flight of steps

leading down to it; a balustrade set with pots filling up all but the

center arch prevented that.

"Herbert!" she cried again louder, "is that you?" But there was not a

sound.

God in heaven! who lay there? dying or dead? helplessness broke down

her self-control at last, and she crept back into the room, back to

the old companionship, crying miserably. Ah! she was so tired, so

weary of it all. So glad to rest! A sense of real physical relief came

to her body as, for the first time for long, long hours, she let her

muscles slacken, and to her mind as she let herself cry on, like a

child, forgetting the cause of grief in the grief itself. Forgetting

even that after a time in sheer rest; so that the moon, when it had

climbed high enough to peep in through the closed doors, found her

asleep, her arms spread out over the crimson network, her head resting

on what lay beneath it. But she slept dreamfully and once her voice

rose in the quick anxious tones of those who talk in their sleep.

"Freddy! Freddy!" she called. "Save Freddy, someone! Never mind, ayah!

He is only a boy, and the other, the other may----" Then her words

merged into each other uncertainly, after the manner of dreamers, and

she slept sounder.

Soundest of all, however, in the cool before the dawn; so that she did

not wake with a stealthy foot in the side veranda, a stealthy hand on

the hasp outside; did not wake even when Jim Douglas stood beside her,

looking down vexedly on the blanket-shrouded figure pillowed on the

body he came to seek. For he had been delayed by a thousand

difficulties, and though the shallow grave was ready dug in the

garden, the presence of this native--even though a woman,

apparently--must make his task longer. Was it a woman? One hand on his

revolver, he laid the other on the sleeper's shoulder. His touch

brought Kate to her feet blindly, without a cry, to meet Fate.

"My God! Mrs. Erlton!" he cried, and she recognized his voice at once.

Fate indeed! His chance and hers. His chance and hers!

She stood half stupefied by her dreams, her waking; but he, after his

nature, was ready in a second for action, and broke in on his own

wondering questions impatiently. "But we are losing time. Quick!

you must get to some safer place before dawn. Twist that blanket

right--let me, please. That will do. Now, if you will follow close, I

must get you hidden somewhere for to-day. It is too near dawn for

anything else. Come!"

She put out her hand vaguely, as if to stave his swift decision away,

and, looking in her face, he recognized that she must have time, that

he must curb his own energy.

"Then it was you who fired," she said in a dull voice. "You who shut

me in here? You who killed those voices. Why didn't you answer when I

called, when I thought it was Herbert? It was very unkind--very

unkind."

He stared at her for a second, and then his hand went out and closed

on hers firmly. "Mrs. Erlton! I'm going to save you if I can. Come. I

don't know what you're talking about, and there is no time for talk.

Come."

So, hand in hand, they passed into the side veranda, through which he

had entered, and so, since the nearest way to the city lay down that

flight of steps, to the front one.

"Take care," he cried, half-stumbling himself, and forcing her to

avoid something that lay huddled up against the wall. It was a dead

man. And there, upon the steps which showed white as marble in the

moonlight, were two others in a heap. A third lower down, ghastlier

still, lying amid dark stains marring the whiteness, and with a gaping

cut clearly visible on the shoulder.

But that still further down! Jim Douglas gave a quick cry,

dropped Kate's hand, and was on his knees beside the tall young

figure--coatless, its white shirt stiff with blood, which lay head

downward on the last steps as if it had pitched forward in some mad

pursuit. As he turned it over on its back gently, the young face

showed in the moonlight stern, yet still exultant, and the sword,

still clenched in the stiff right hand, rattled on the steps.

"Mainwaring! I don't understand," he said, looking up bewildered into

Kate's face. The puzzle had gone from it; she seemed roused to life

again.

"I understand now," she said softly, and as she spoke she stooped

and raised the boy's head tenderly in her hands. "Don't let us

leave him here," she went on eagerly, hastily. "Leave him there,

beside--beside--_her_."

Jim Douglas made no reply. He understood also dimly, and he only

signed to her to take the feet instead. So together they managed to

place that dead weight within the threshold and close the door.

Then Jim Douglas held out his hand again, but there was a new

friendliness in its grip. "Come!" he said, and there was a new ring in

his voice, "the night is far spent, the day is at hand."

It was true. As they stepped from the now waning moonlight into the

shadow of the trees, the birds, beginning to dream of dawn, shifted

and twittered faintly among the branches. And once, startling them

both, there was a louder rustling from a taller tree, a flutter of

broad white wings to a perch nearer the city, a half-sleepy cry of:

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

"If I had time," muttered Jim Douglas fiercely, "I would go and wring

that cursed bird's neck! But for it----" Kate's tighter clasp on his

hand seemed like an appeal, and he went on in silence.

So, as they slipped from the gardens into the silent streets, the

muezzin's monotonous chant began from the shadowy minaret of the big

mosque.

"Prayer is more than sleep!--than sleep!--than sleep!"

The night was far spent; the day was indeed at hand--and what would it

bring forth? Jim Douglas, with a sinking at his heart, told himself he

could at least be thankful that one day was done.

BOOK IV.

"SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF."

CHAPTER I.

THE DEATH PLEDGE.

The outer court of the Palace lay steeped in the sunshine of noon. Its

hot rose-red walls and arcades seemed to shimmer in the glare, and the

dazzle and glitter gave a strange air of unreality, of instability to

all things. To the crowds of loungers taking their siesta in every

arcade and every scrap of shadow, to the horses stabled in rows in the

glare and the blaze, to the eager groups of new arrivals which, from

time to time, came in from the outer world by the cool, dark tunnel of

the Lahore gate to stand for a second, as if blinded by the shimmer

and glitter, before becoming a part of that silent, drowsy stir of

life.

From an arch close to the inner entry to the precincts rose a

monotonous voice reading aloud. The reader was evidently the author

also, for his frown of annoyance was unmistakable at a sudden

diversion caused by the entry of a dozen or more armed men, shouting

at the top of their voices: "_Pâdisâth, Pâdisâth, Pâdisâth!_ We be

fighters for The Faith. _Pâdisâth!_ a blessing, a blessing!"

A malicious laugh came from one of the listeners in the arcade--a

woman shrouded in a Pathan veil.

"'Tis as well his Majesty hath taken another cooling draught," came

her voice shrilly. "What with writing letters for help to the Huzoors

to please Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, and blessing faith to please

the Queen, he hath enough to do in keeping his brain from getting

dizzy with whirling this way and that. Mayhap faith will fail first,

since it is not satisfied with blessings. They are windy diet, and I

heard Mahboob say an hour agone that there was too much faith for the

Treasury. Lo! moonshee-jee, put that fact down among thy heroics--they

need balance!"

"Sure, niece Hâfzan," reproved the old editor of the Court Journal, "I

see naught that needs it. Syyed Abdulla's periods fit the case as peas

fit a pod; they hang together."

"As we shall when the Huzoors return," assented the voice from the

veil.

"They will return no more, woman!" said another. It belonged to a man

who leaned against a pilaster, looking dreamily out into the glare

where, after a brief struggle, the band of fighters for the faith had

pushed aside the timid door-keepers and forced their way to the inner

garden. Through the open door they showed picturesquely, surging down

the path, backed by green foliage and the white dome of the Pearl

Mosque rising against the blue sky.

"The Faith! The Faith! We come to fight for the Faith!"

Their cry echoed over the drowsy, dreaming crowds, making men turn

over in their sleep; that was all.

But the dreaminess grew in the face looking at the vista through the

open door till its eyes became like those Botticelli gives to his

Moses--the eyes of one who sees a promised land--and the dreamy voice

went on:

"How can they return; seeing that He is Lord and Master? Changing the

Day to Darkness, the Darkness into Day. Holding the unsupported skies,

proving His existence by His existence, Omnipotent. High in Dignity,

the Avenger of His Faithful people."

The old editor waggled his head with delighted approval; the author

fidgeted over an eloquence not his own; but Hâfzan's high laugh rang

cynically:

"That may be so, most learned divine; yet I, Hâfzan, the harem scribe,

write no orders nowadays for King or Queen without the proviso of

'writ by a slave in pursuance of lawful order and under fear of death'

in some quiet corner. For I have no fancy, see you, for hanging, even

if it be in good company. But, go on with thy leading article,

moonshee-jee, I will interrupt no more."

"Thus by a single revolution of time the state of affairs is completely

reversed,[4] and the great and memorable event which took place four

days ago must be looked upon as a practical warning to the uninformed

and careless, namely the British officers and those who never dreamed

of the decline and fall of their government, but who have now

convincing proof of what has been written in the Indelible Tablets by

God. The following brief account, therefore, of the horrible and

memorable events is given here solely for the sake of those still

inclined to treat them as a dream. On Monday, the 16th of Rumzân, that

holy month in which the Word of God came down to earth, and in which,

for all time, lies the Great Night of Power, the courts being open

early on account of the hot weather, the magistrate discharging his

wonted duties, suddenly the bridge toll-keeper appeared, informing him

that a few Toork troopers had first crossed the bridge----"

The dreamy-faced divine turned in sharp reproach. "Not so, Syyed-jee.

The vision came first--the vision of the blessed Lord Ali seen by the

muezzin. Wouldst make this time as other times, and deny the miracles

by which it is attested as of God?"

"Miracles!" echoed Hâfzan. "I see no miracle in an old man on a

camel."

The divine frowned. "Nor in a strange white bird with a golden crown,

which hovered over the city giving the sacred cry? Nor in the

fulfillment of Hussan Askuri's dream?"

Hâfzan burst into shrill laughter. "Hussan Askuri! Lo! Moulvie

Mohammed Ismail, didst thou know the arch dreamer as I, thou wouldst

not credit his miracles. He dreams to the Queen's orders as a bear

dances to the whip. And as thou knowest, my mistress hath the knack of

jerking the puppet strings. She hath been busy these days, and even

the Princess Farkhoonda----"

"What of the Princess?" asked the newswriter, eagerly, nibbling his

pen in anticipation.

"Nay, not so!" retorted Hâfzan. "I give no news nowadays, since I

cannot set 'spoken under fear of death' upon the words."

She rose as she spoke, yet lingered, to stand a second beside the

divine and say in a softer tone, "Dreams are not safe, even to the

pious, as thou, Moulvie-sahib. A bird is none the less a bird because

it is strange to Delhi and hath been taught to speak. That it was seen

all know; yet for all that, it may be one of Hussan Askuri's tricks."

"Let it be so, woman," retorted Mohammed Ismail almost fiercely, "is

there not miracle enough and to spare without it? Did not the sun rise

four days ago upon infidels in power? Where are they now? Were there

not two thousand of them in Meerut? Did they strike a blow? Did they

strike one here? Where is their strength? Gone! I tell thee--gone!"

Hâfzan laid a veiled clutch on his arm suddenly and her other hand,

widening the folds of her shapeless form mysteriously, pointed into

the blaze and shimmer of sunlight. "It lies there, Moulvie-sahib, it

lies there," she said in a passionate whisper, "for God is on their

side."

It was a pitiful little group to which she pointed. A woman, her mixed

blood showing in her face, her Christianity in her dress, being driven

along like a sheep to the shambles across the courtyard. She clasped a

year-old baby to her breast and a handsome little fellow of three

toddled at her skirts. She paused in a scrap of shade thrown by a tree

which grew beside a small cistern or reservoir near the middle of the

court, and shifted the heavy child in her arms, looking round, as she

did so, with a sort of wild, fierce fear, like that of a hunted

animal. The cluster of sepoys who had made their prisoner over to the

Palace guard turned hastily from the sight; but the guard drove her on

with coarse jibes.

"The rope dangles close, Moulvie-jee," came Hâfzan's voice again.

"Ropes, said I? Gentle ropes? Nay! only as the wherewithal to tie

writhing limbs as they roast. If thou hast a taste for visions, pious

one, tell me what thou seest ahead for the murderers of such poor

souls?"

"Murderers," echoed Mohammed Ismail swiftly; "there is no talk of

murder. 'Tis against our religion. Have I not signed the edict against

it? Have we not protested against the past iniquity of criminals, and

ignorant beasts, and vile libertines like Prince Abool-Bukr, who take

advantage----"

"He was too drunk for much evil, learned one!" sneered Hâfzan. "Godly

men do worse than he in their own homes, as I know to my cost. As for

thine edict! Take it to the Princess Farkhoonda. She is a simple soul,

though she holds the vilest liver of Delhi in a leash. But the

Queen--the Queen is of different mettle, as you edict-signers will

find. There are nigh fifty such prisoners in the old cook-room now.

Wherefore?"

"For safety. There are nigh forty in the city police station also."

Hâfzan gathered her folds closer, "Truly thou art a simple soul, pious

divine. Dost not think there is a difference, still, between the

Palace and the city? But God save all women, black or white, say I!

Save them from men, and since we be all bound to hell together by

virtue of our sex, then will it be a better place than Paradise by

having fewer men in it."

She flung her final taunts over her shoulder at her hearers as she

went limping off.

"Heed her not, most pious!" said her uncle apologetically. "She hath

been mad against men ever since hers, being old and near his end, took

her, a child, and----"

But Moulvie Mohammed Ismail was striding across the courtyard to the

long, low, half-ruinous shed in which the prisoners were kept.

"Have they proper food and water?" he asked sharply of the guard. "The

King gave orders for it."

"It comes but now!" replied the sergeant glibly, pointing to a file of

servants bearing dishes which were crossing the courtyard from the

royal kitchens. The Moulvie gave a sigh of relief, for Hâfzan's hints

had alarmed him. These same helpless prisoners lay on his conscience,

since he and his like were mainly responsible for the diligent search

for Christians which had been going on during the last few days; for

it was not to be tolerated that the faithful should risk salvation by

concealing them. The proper course was plain, unmistakable. They

should be given up to the authorities and be made into good

Mohammedans; by persuasion if possible, if not, by force. In truth the

Moulvie dreamed already of ninety and odd willing converts, as a

further manifestation of divine favor. Perhaps more; though most of

these ill-advised attempts at concealment must have come to an end by

now.

They had indeed; those four days of peace, of hourly increasing

religious enthusiasm for a cause so evidently favored by High Heaven,

had made it well nigh impossible to carry on a task attempted by so

many, when it seemed likely to last for a few hours only.

Even Jim Douglas told himself he must fail unless he could get help.

He had succeeded so far, simply because--by a mere chance--he had, not

one but several, places of concealment ready to his hand without the

necessity for taking anyone into his confidence. For he had found it

convenient in his work to have cities of refuge, as it were, where he

could escape from curiosity or change a disguise at leisure. The

shilling or so a month required for the rent of a room in some

tenement house being more than repaid by the sense of security the

possession gave him. It was to one of these, therefore, that he took

Kate on the dawn of the 12th, leaving her locked up in it alone; till

night enabled him to take her on to another; so by constant change

managing to escape suspicion. But as the days passed in miraculous

peace, he recognized the hopelessness of continuing this life for

long. To begin with, Kate's nerves could not stand it. She was brave

enough, but she had an imagination, and what woman with that could

stand being left alone in the dark for twelve hours at a time, never

knowing if the slow starvation, which would be her fate if anything

untoward happened to him, had not already begun? He could not expect

her to stand it, when three days of something far less difficult had

left him haggard, his nerves unstrung; left him with the possibility

looming in the future of his losing his self-control some day, and

going madly for the whole world as young Mainwaring had done. Not that

he cared for Kate's safety so much, as that the mere thought of

failure roused a beast-like ferocity in him. So, as he wandered

restlessly about the city, waiting in a fever of impatience for some

sign of the world without those rose-red walls--waiting day by day,

with a growing tempest of rage, for the night to return and let him

creep up some dark stairs and assure himself of a woman's safety, he

was piecing together a plan in case---- Of what? In case the stories

he heard in the bazaars were true? No! that was impossible. How could

the English have been wiped out of India? Yet as he saw the deserted

shops being reopened in solemn procession by an old pantaloon on an

elephant calling himself the Emperor, when he saw Abool-Bukr letting

off squibs in general rejoicing over the reestablishment of Mohammedan

empire; above all when he saw the tide of life returning to the

streets, his mad desire to strike a blow and smash the sham was

tempered by an almost unbearable curiosity as to what had really

happened. But he dared not try and find out. Useless though he knew it

was, he hung round the quarter where Kate lay concealed for the day,

feeling a certain consolation in knowing that he was as close to her

as he dared to be. Such a life was manifestly impossible, and so, bit

by bit, his plan grew. Yet, when it had grown, he almost shrank from

it, so strange did it seem, in its linking of the past with the

present. For Kate must pass as his wife--his sick wife, hidden, as

Zora had been, on some terraced roof, with Tara as her servant; he,

meanwhile, passing as an Afghan horse-dealer, kept from returning

North, like others of his trade, by this illness in his house. The

plan was perfectly feasible if Tara would consent. And Jim Douglas,

though he ignored his own certainty, never really doubted that she

would. He had not been born in the mist-covered mountains of the North

for nothing. Their mysticism was part of his nature, and he felt that

he had saved her for this; that for this, and this only, he had played

that childish but successful cantrip with her hair. In a way, was not

the pathetic idyl on the roof with little Zora but a rehearsal of a

tragedy--a rehearsal without which he could not have played his part?

Strange thread of fate, indeed, linking these women together! and

though he shrank from admitting its very existence, it gave him

confidence that the whole would hang together securely. So that when

he sought Tara out, his only real doubt was whether it would be wiser

to tell her the truth about Kate, or assert that she was his wife. He

chose the latter as less risky, since, even if Tara refused aid, she

would not overtly betray anyone belonging to him.

But Tara did not refuse. To begin with, she could have refused nothing

in the first joy of finding him safe when she had believed him dead

like all the other Huzoors. And then a vast confusion of love, and

pride, and remorse, and fierce passionate denial of all three, led her

into consent. If the Huzoor wanted her to help to save his wife why

should she object? Though it was nothing to her if the mem was _his_

mem or not. Jim Douglas, listening to the eager protest, wondered if

he might not safely have saved himself an unnecessary complication;

but then he wondered at many things Tara said and did. At her quick

frown when he promised her both hair and locket as her reward. At the

faint quiver amid the scorn with which she had replied that he would

still want the latter for the mem's hair. At her slow smile when he

opened the gold oval to show the black lock still in sole possession.

She had turned aside to look at the hearth-cakes she had been toasting

when he came in, and then gone into the necessary details of

arrangement in the most matter-of-fact way. Naturally the Huzoor had

sought help from his servant. From whom else could he seek it? As for

her saintship, there was nothing new in that. She had been suttee

always as the master very well knew. So nothing she did for him, or he

for her, could make that suffer. Therefore she would arrange as she

had arranged for Zora. The Huzoor must rent a roof--roofs were

safest--and she would engage a half-blind, half-deaf old sweeper-woman

she knew of. Perhaps another if need be. But the Huzoor need have no

fear of such details if he gave her money. And this Jim Douglas had

hidden in the garden of his deserted bungalow in Duryagunj; so that in

truth it seemed as if the whole plan had been evolved for them by a

kindly fate.

And yet Jim Douglas felt a keen pang of regret when, for the first

time, he gave the familiar knock of those old Lucknow days at the door

of a Delhi roof and Tara opened it to him, dressed in the old crimson

drapery, the gold bangles restored to her beautiful brown arms. He had

brought Kate round during the previous night to the lodging he had

managed to secure in the Mufti's quarter, and, leaving her there

alone, had taken the key to Tara; this being the safest plan, since

everything could then be arranged in discreet woman's fashion before

he put in an appearance.

And the task had been done well. The outside square or yard of

parapeted roof which he entered lay conventional to the uttermost. A

spinning-wheel here, a row of water-pots there, a mat, a reed stool or

two, a cooking place in one corner, a ragged canvas screen at the

inner doors. Nothing there to prepare him for finding an Englishwoman

within; an Englishwoman with a faint color in her wan cheeks; a new

peace in her gray eyes, busy--Heaven save the mark!--in sticking some

disjointed jasmine buds into the shallow saucer of a water-pot.

"Tara brought them strung on a string," said Kate half apologetically

after her first welcome, as she noted his look. "I suppose she meant me

to wear them--with the other things," she paused to glance down with a

smile at her dress, "but it seemed a pity. They were like a new world

to me--like a promise--somehow."

He sat down on the edge of the string bed feeling a little dazed and

looked at her and her surroundings critically. It was a pleasant

sunshiny bit of roof, vaulted by the still cool morning sky. There was

a little arcaded room at one end, the topmost branches of a neem tree

showed over one side; on the other, the swelling dome of the big

mosque looked like a great white cloud, and in one corner was a sort

of square turret, from the roof of which, gained by a narrow brick

ladder, the whole city was visible. For it was the highest house in

the quarter, higher even than the roof beside it, over which the same

neem tree cast a shadow.

And as he looked, he thought idly that no dress in the world was more

graceful than the Delhi dress with its billowy train and loose, soft,

filmy veil. And Kate looked well in white--all in white. He pulled

himself up sharply; but indeed memory was playing him tricks, and

the stress and strain of reality seemed far from that slip of

sun-saturated roof where a graceful woman in white was sticking

jasmine buds into water. And suddenly the thought came that Zora would

have worn the chaplets heedlessly; there would have been no

sentimentality over withered flowers on her part.

"A promise," he echoed half-bitterly. "Well! one must hope so. And

even if the worst comes, it will come easier here."

She looked up at him reproachfully. "Don't remind me of that, please,"

she said hurriedly; "I seem to have forgotten--here under the blue

sky. I dare say it's very trivial of me, but I can't help it.

Everything amuses me, interests me. It is so quaint, so new. Even this

dress; it is hardly credible, but I wished so much for a looking-glass

just now, to see how I looked in it."

Her eyes met his almost gayly, and he felt an odd resentment in

recognizing that Zora would have said the words as frankly.

"I have one here--in a ring," he replied somewhat stiffly, with a

vague feeling he had done all this before, as he untied the knot of a

small bundle he had brought with him. "It is not much use--for that

sort of thing--I'm afraid," he went on, "but I think you had better

have these: it is a great point--even for your own sake--to dress as

well as play the part."

Kate, with a sudden gravity, looked at the pile of native ornaments he

emptied out on to the bed. Bracelets in gold and silver, anklets, odd

little jeweled tassels for the hair, quaint silk-strung necklets and

talismans.

"Here is the looking-glass," he said, choosing out a tiny round one

set in filigree gold; "you must wear it on your thumb--but it will

barely go on my little finger," he spoke half to himself, and Kate,

fitting on the ring, looked at him and set her lips.

"It is too small for me also," she said, laying it down with

a faint air of distaste. "They are very pretty, Mr. Greyman,"

she added quickly, "but I would rather not--unless it is really

necessary--unless you think----"

He rose half-wearily, half-impatiently. "I should prefer it; but you

can do as you like. The jewels belonged to a woman I loved very

dearly, Mrs. Erlton. She was not my wife--but she was a good woman for

all that. You need not be afraid."

Kate felt the blood tingle to her face as she laid violent hands on

the first ornament she touched. It happened to be a solid gold bangle.

"It is too small too," she said petulantly, trying to squeeze her hand

through it. "Really it would be better----"

"Excuse me," he replied coolly, "if you will let me." He drew the

great carved knobs apart deftly, slipped her wrist sideways through

the opening, and had them closed again in a second.

"You can't take it off at night, that is all," he went on, "but I will

tell Tara to show you how to wear the rest. I must be off now and

settle a thousand things."

As he passed into the outer roof once more, Kate felt that flush, half

of resentment, half of shame, still on her face. In such surroundings

how trivial it was, and yet he had guessed her thought truly. Had he

guessed also the odd thrill which the touch of that gold fetter gave

her? Half-mechanically she tried to loosen it, to remove it, and then

with an impatient frown desisted and began to put on the other

bracelets. What did it matter, one way or the other? And then,

becoming interested despite herself, she set to work to puzzle out

uses and places for the pile.

Meanwhile Jim Douglas was dinning instructions into Tara's ear; but

she also, he told himself angrily, was trivial to the last degree. And

when finally he urged an immediate darkening of Kate's hair and a

faint staining of the face to suit the only part possible with her

gray eyes--that of a fair Afghan--he flung away in despair from the

irrelevant remark:

"But the mem will never be so pretty as Zora; and besides she has such

big feet."

Big feet! He swore under his breath that all women were alike in this,

that they saw the whole world through the medium of their sex; and

_that_ was at the bottom of all the mischief. Delhi had been lost to

save women; the trouble had begun to please them. Even now, as far as

he could see, resistance would collapse but for one woman's ambition;

though despite the Queen and her plots, a hundred brave men or so

might still be masters of Delhi if they chose. Since it was still each

for himself, and the devil take the hindmost with the mutineers. The

certainty of this had made these long days of inaction almost beyond

bearing to him; and as Jim Douglas passed out into the street he

thought bitterly that here again a woman stood in the way; since but

for Kate he could surely have forced Meerut into making reprisals by

reporting the true state of affairs.

Yet every hour made these reprisals more difficult. Indeed, as he left

the Mufti's quarters on that morning of the 16th of May, something was

going on in the Palace which ended indecision for many a man and left

no chance of retreat. For Zeenut Maihl saw facts as clearly as Jim

Douglas, and knew that the first tramp of disciplined feet would be

the signal for scuttle; if a chance of escape remained.

And so this something was going on. By someone's orders of course; by

whose is one of the unanswered questions of the Indian Mutiny.

The Queen herself was sitting with the King, amicably, innocently,

applauding his latest couplet; which was in sober truth, one of his

best:

"God takes this dice-box world, shakes upside down,

Throws one defeat, and one a kingly crown."

He was beginning to feel the latter on the old head, which was so

diligently stuffed with dreams; but the Queen knew in her heart of

hearts that the fight for sovereignty had only just begun. So her mind

was chiefly occupied in a spiteful exultation at the thought of some

folk's useless terror when--this thing being done--they would find

their hands irrevocably on the plow. Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, for

instance; their elaborate bridges would be useless; and Abool-Bukr

with his squibs and processions, Farkhoonda with her patter of virtue

and religion. If only for the sake of immeshing this last victim

Zeenut Maihl would not have shrunk; since those three or four days of

cozening had left the Queen with a still more vigorous hate for the

Princess Farkhoonda, who had fallen into the trap so easily, and who

already began to give herself airs and discuss the future on a plane

of equality. Pretty, conceited fool! who even now, so the spies said,

was waiting to receive the Prince, her nephew, for the first time

since she came to the Palace. The very fact that it was the first time

seemed an aggravation in the Queen's angry eyes, proving as it did a

certain reality in Farkhoonda's pretensions to decorum.

In truth they were very real to the Princess herself; had been gaining

reality ever since that first deft suggestion of a possibility had set

her heart beating. The possibility, briefly, of the King choosing to

set aside that early marriage so tragically interrupted; choosing to

declare it no marriage and give his consent to another. Newâsi had

indignantly scouted the suggestion, had stopped her ears, her heart;

but the remembrance of it lingered, enervating her mind, and as she

waited for the interview with the Prince she felt vaguely that it was

a very different matter receiving him in these bride-like garments, in

these dim, heavily scented rooms, to what it had been under the clear

sky in her scholar's dress. Yet as she stooped from mere habit,

aroused by the finery itself, to arrange her long brocaded train into

better folds, she gave something between a sigh and a laugh at the

certainty of his admiration. And after all, why should she not have it

if the King----

The sound of a distant shot made her start and pause, listening for

another. So she stood a slim figure ablaze with color and jewels, a

figure with studied seductiveness in every detail of its dress; and

she knew that it was so. Why not? If--if he liked it so, and if the

King----

Newâsi clasped her hands nervously and walked up and down the dim

room. Abool was late, and he had no right to be late on this his first

visit of ceremony to his aunt. The Mirza-sahib was no doubt late,

admitted her attendants, but the door-keeper had reported a

disturbance of some kind in the outer court which might be the cause

of delay.

A disturbance! Newâsi, a born coward, shrank from the very thought,

though she felt that it could be nothing--nothing but one of the many

brawls, the constant quarrels.

God and his prophet! who--what was that? She recoiled with a scream of

terror from the wild figure which burst in on her unceremoniously,

which followed her retreat into the far corner, flung itself at her

knees, clasping them, burying its face among her scented draperies.

But by that time her terror was gone, and she stooped, trying to free

herself from those clinging arms, from the disgrace, from the outrage;

from the drunken----

"Abool!" she cried fiercely, then turning to the curious tittering

women, stamped her foot at them and bade them begone. And when they

had obeyed, she beat her little hands against those clinging ones

again with wild upbraidings, till suddenly they fell as if paralyzed

before the awful horror and dread in the face which rose from her

fineries.

"Come, Newâsi!" stammered the white trembling lips, "come from this

hangman's den. Did I not warn thee? But thou hast put the rope round

my neck--I who only wanted to live my own life, die my own death.

Come! Come!"

He stumbled to his feet, but seemed unable to stir. So he stood

looking at his hands stupidly.

Farkhoonda looked too, her face growing gray.

"What is't, Abool?" she faltered; "what is't, dear?"

But she knew; it was blood, new shed, still wet.

He stood silent, gazing at the stains stupidly. "I did not strike," he

muttered to himself, "but I called; or did I strike? I--I----" He

threw up his head and his words rushed recklessly in a high shrill

voice, "I warned thee! I told thee it was not safe! They were herded

like sheep in the sunshine by the cistern, and the smell of blood rose

up. It was in my very nostrils, for, look you, that first shot missed

them and killed one of my men. I saw it. A round red spot oozing over

the white--and they herded like sheep----"

"Who?" she asked faintly.

"I told thee; the prisoners, with the cry to kill above the cries

of the children, the flash of blood-dulled swords above women's

heads--and I---- Nay! I warned thee, Newâsi, there was butcher

_here_"--his blood-stained hands left their mark on his gay clothes.

"Abool!" she cried, "thou didst not----"

"Did I?" he almost screamed. "God! will it ever leave my sight? I gave

the call, I ran in, I drew my sword. It spurted over my hands from a

child's throat as I would have struck--or--or--did I strike? Newâsi!"

his voice had sunk again almost to a whisper, "it was in its mother's

arms,--she did not cry,--she looked and I--I----" he buried his face

in his hands--"I came to thee."

She stood looking at him for a moment, her hands clenched, her

beautiful soft eyes ablaze; then recklessly she tore the jewels from

her arms, her neck, her hair.

"So she has dared! Yea! Come! thou art right, Abool!" The words mixed

themselves with the tinkle of bracelets as, flung from her in wild

passion, they rolled into the corners of the room, with the chink of

necklaces as they fell, with the rustle of brocade and tinsel as she

tore them from her. "She has killed them--the helpless fugitives,

guests who have eaten the King's salt! She thinks to beguile us

all--to beguile thee. But she shall not. It is not too late. Come!

Come! Abool--thou shalt have all from me--yea! all, sooner than she

should beguile thee thus--Come!"

She had snatched an old white veil from its peg and wrapped it round

her, as she passed rapidly to the door; but he did not move. So she

passed back again as swiftly to take his hand, stained as it was, and

lay her cheek to it caressingly.

"Thou didst not strike, dear, thou didst not! Come, dear, that

she-devil shall not have thee--I will hold thee fast."

Five minutes after a plain curtained dhoolie left the precincts and

swayed past the Great Hall of Audience with its toothed red arches,

looking as if they yawned for victims. The courtyard beyond lay

strangely silent, despite the shifting crowd, which gathered and

melted and gathered again round the little tree-shaded cistern where

but the day before Hâfzan and the Moulvie had watched a mother pause

to clasp her baby to softer, securer rest.

The woman and the child were at the cistern now, and the Rest had

come. Softer, securer than all other rest, and the mother shared it;

shared it with other women, other children.

But as the Princess Farkhoonda, fearful of what she might see, peeped

through the dhoolie curtains, there was nothing to be seen save the

shifting, curious crowd, while the impartial sunshine streamed down on

it, and those on whom it gazed.

So let the shifting, crowding years with their relentless questioning

eyes shut out all thought of what lay by the cistern, save that of

rest and the impartial sunshine streaming upon it.

For as the beautiful soft eyes drew back relieved, a bugle rang

through the arcades, echoed from the wall, floated out into the city.

The bugle to set watch and ward, to close the gates; since the

irrevocable step had been taken, the death-pledge made.

So the dream of sovereignty began in earnest behind closed gates. But

if women had lost Delhi, those who lay murdered about the little

cistern had regained it. For Hâfzan had spoken truth; the strength of

the Huzoors lay there.

The strength of the real Master.

CHAPTER II.

PEACE? PEACE?

Three weeks had passed, and still the dream of sovereignty went on

behind the closed gates, while all things shimmered and simmered in

the fierce blaze of summer sunlight. The city lay--a rose-red glare

dazzling to look at--beside the glittering curves of the river, and

the deserted Ridge, more like a lizard than ever, sweltered and slept

lazily, its tail in the cool blue water, its head upon the cool green

groves of the Subz-mundi. And over all lay a liquid yellow heat-haze

blurring every outline, till the whole seemed some vast mirage.

And still there were no tidings of the master, no cloud of dust upon

the Meerut road. None.

Amazing, incredible fact! Men whispered of it on the steps of the

Great Mosque when, the last Friday of the fast coming round, its

commination service brought many from behind closed doors to realize

that by such signs of kingship as beatings of drums, firing of

salutes, and levying of loans, Bahâdur Shâh really had filched the

throne of his ancestors from the finest fighters in the world. Filched

it without a blow, without a struggle, without even a threat, a

defiance.

So here they were in a new world without posts or telegraphs, laws or

order. Time itself turned back hundreds of years and all power of

progress vested absolutely in one old man, the Light of Religion, the

Defender of the Faith, the Great Moghul. If that were not a miracle it

came too perilously near to one for some folk's loyalty; and so they

drifted palaceward when prayers were over to swell the growing crowd

of courtiers about the Dream King. And even the learned and most loyal

lingered on the steps to whisper, and call obscure prophecies and

ingenious commentaries to mind, and admit that it was strange,

wondrous strange, that the numerical values of the year should yield

the anagram "_Ungrez tubbah shood ba hur soorut_," briefly "The

British shall be annihilated." For the Oriental mind loves such

trivialities.

And, to all intents and purposes, the English were annihilated, during

that short month of peace between the 11th of May and the 8th of June,

1857; for Delhi knew nothing of the vain striving, the ceaseless

efforts of the master to find tents and carriages, horses, ammunition,

medicine, everything once more, save, thank Heaven! courage, and the

determination to be master still.

Even Soma admitted the miracle grudgingly; for he had so far bolstered

up his disloyalty by thoughts of a fair fight. He had not, after all,

gone to Delhi direct, but had cut across country to his own village

near Hansi, and had waited there, hoping to hear of a regular outbreak

of hostilities before definitely choosing his side; and he was still

waiting when, after a fortnight, his greatest chum in the regiment had

turned up from Meerut. For Davee Singh had been one of the many sepoys

of the 11th who had gone back to the colors after that one brief night

of temptation was over. Soma had known this, and more than once as he

waited, the knowledge had been as a magnet drawing him back to the old

pole of thought; for that his chum should be led to victory and he be

among the defeated was probable enough to make Soma hate himself in

anticipation.

But here was Davee Singh, a deserter like he was, sulkily

uncommunicative to the village gossips, but to his fellow admitting

fiercely that the latter had been right. The Huzoors had forgotten how

to fight. Meerut was quiet as the grave; but there was no word of

Delhi, and folk said--what did they not say?

So these two, with a strange mixture of regret and relief in their

hearts, set out for Delhi to see what was happening there; not knowing

that many of their fellows were drifting from it, weary like

themselves of inaction.

They had arrived there, two swaggering Rajpoots, in the midst of the

thanksgivings and jollity of the Mohammedan Easter which followed on

the last Friday of Fast; and they had fallen foul of it frankly. As

frankly as the Mohammedans would have fallen foul of a Hindoo

Saturnalia, or both Mohammedans and Hindoos would have fallen foul of

the festivities in honor of the Queen's Birthday which, on this 25th

of May, 1857, were going on in every cantonment in India as if there

was no such thing as mutiny in the world. So, annoyed with what they

saw and heard, they joined themselves to other Rajpoot malcontents

promptly. They sneered at the old pantaloon's procession, which was in

truth a poor one, though half the tailors in Delhi had been impressed

to hurry up trappings and robes. Perhaps if Abool-Bukr had still been

in charge of squibs and such like, it would have been better; but he

was not. The order he had given to let the Princess Farkhoonda's

dhoolie pass out, before the gates were closed on that day of the

death-pledge, had been his last exercise of authority; for the next

Court Journal contained the announcement that he was dismissed from

his appointment. So he, hovering between the Thunbi Bazaar and the

Mufti's quarter, had nothing to do with the procession at which the

Rajpoots sneered, criticising Mirza Moghul, the Commander-in-Chief's

seat on a horse, and talking boastfully of Vicra-maditya and Pertap as

warlike Hindoos will. Until, about dusk, words came to blows amid a

tinkling of anklets and a terrible smell of musk; for valor drifted as

a matter of course to the wooden balconies of the Thunbi Bazaar during

the month of miracle. So that the inmates, coining money, called down

blessings on the new régime.

Soma, however, with a cut over one eye sorely in need of a stitch,

swore loudly when he could find none to patch him up save a doddering

old Hakeem, who proposed dosing him with paper pills inscribed with

the name of Providence; an incredible remedy to one accustomed to all

the appliances of hospitals and skilled surgery.

"Yea! no doubt he is a fool," assented the other sepoys in frank

commiseration, "yet he is the best you will get. For see you, brother,

the doctors belong to the Huzoors; so many a brave man must expect to

die needlessly, since those cursed dressers are not safe. There was

one took the bottles and things and swore he could use them as well as

any. And luck went with him until he gave five heroes who had been

drunk the night before somewhat to clear their heads. By all the gods

in Indra's heaven they were clear even of life in half an hour. So we

fell on the dresser and cleared him too. Yea! fool or no fool, paper

pills are safer!"

Jim Douglas, who, profiting by the dusk and confusion, had lingered by

the group after recognizing Soma's voice, turned away with a savage

chuckle; not that the tale amused him, but that he was glad to think

six of the devils had gone to their account. For those long days of

peace and enforced inaction had sunk him lower and lower into sheer

animal hatred of those he dare not rebuke. He knew it himself, he felt

that his very courage was becoming ferocity, and the thought that

others, biding their time as he was, must be sinking into it also,

filled him with fierce joy at the thought of future revenge. And yet,

so far as he personally was concerned, those long days had passed

quietly, securely, peacefully, and he could at any time climb out of

all sight and sound of turmoil to a slip of sunlit roof where a woman

waited for him with confidence and welcome in her eyes. With something

obtrusively English also for his refreshment, since tragedy, even the

fear of death, cannot claim a whole life, and Kate took to amusing

herself once more by making her corner of the East as much like the

West as she dare. That was not much, but Jim Douglas' eye noted the

indescribable difference which the position of a reed stool, the

presence of a poor bunch of flowers, the little row of books in a

niche, made in the familiar surroundings. For there were books and to

spare in Delhi; for the price of a few pennies Jim Douglas might have

brought her a cartload of such loot had he deemed it safe; but he did

not, and so the library consisted of grammars and vocabularies from

which Kate learned with a rapidity which surprised and interested her

teacher. In truth she had nothing else to do. Yet when he came, as he

often did, to find her absorbed in her work, her eyes dreamy with the

puzzle of tense, he resented it inwardly, telling himself once more

that women were trivial creatures, and life seemed trivial too, for in

truth his nerves were all jangled and out of tune with the desire to

get away from this strange shadow of a past idyll; to leave all

womanhood behind and fall to fighting manfully. So that often as he

sat beside her, patient outwardly, inwardly fretting to be gone even

in the nightmare of the city, his eye would fall on the circlet of

gold he had slipped, out of sheer arrogance and imperious temper,

round that slender wrist, and feel that somehow he had fettered

himself hopelessly when, more than a year past, he had given that

promise. His chance and hers! Was this all? One woman's safety. And

she, following his eyes to the bangle, would feel the thrill of its

first touch once more, and think how strange it was that his chance

and hers were so linked together. But, being a woman, her heart would

soften instinctively to the man who sat beside her, and whose face

grew sterner and more haggard day by day; while hers?--she could see

enough of it in the little looking-glass on her thumb to recognize

that she was positively getting fat! She tried to amuse him by telling

him so, by telling him many of the little humorous touches which come

even into tragic life, and he was quite ready to smile at them. But

only to please her. So day by day a silence grew between them as they

sat on the inner roof, while Tara spun outside, or watched them

furtively from some corner. And the flare of the sunset, unseen behind

the parapeted wall, would lie on the swelling dome and spiked minarets

of the mosque and make the paper kites, flown in this month of May by

half the town, look like drifting jewels; fit canopy for the City of

Dreams and for this strangest of dreams upon the housetop.

"Has--has anything gone wrong?" she asked in desperation one day, when

he had sat moodily silent for a longer time than usual. "I would

rather you told me, Mr. Greyman."

He looked at her, vaguely surprised at the name; for he had almost

forgotten it. Forgotten utterly that she could not know any other. And

why should she? He had made the promise under that name; let them

stick to it so long as Fate had linked their chances together.

"Nothing; not for us at least," he said, and then a sudden remorse at

his own unfriendliness came over him. "There was another poor chap

discovered to-day," he added in a softer tone. "I believe that you and

I, Mrs. Erlton, must be the only two left now."

"I dare say," she echoed a little wearily, "they--they killed him I

suppose."

He nodded. "I saw his body in the bazaar afterward. I used to know him

a bit--a clever sort----"

"Yes----"

"Mixed blood, of course, or he could not have passed muster so long as

a greengrocer's assistant."

"Well--I would rather hear if you don't mind."

His dark eyes met hers with a sudden eagerness, a sudden passion in

them.

"What a little thing life is after all! He only said one word--only

one. He was selling watermelons, and some brute tried to cheat him

first, and then cheeked him. And he forgot a moment and said:

_Chup-raho_,' (be silent)--only that!--'_chup-raho_'! They were

bragging of it--the devils. We knew he couldn't be a coolie, they

said, that is a master's word.' My God! What wouldn't I give to say it

sometimes! I could have shouted to them then, _Chup-raho_, you fools!

you cowards!' and some of them would have been silent enough----"

He broke off hurriedly, clenching his hands like a vise on each other,

as if to curb the tempest of words.

"I beg your pardon," he said after a pause, rising to walk away; "I--I

lose control----" He paused again and shook his head silently. Kate

followed him and laid her hand on his arm; the loose gold fetter

slipped to her wrist and touched him too.

"You think I don't understand," she said with a sudden sob in her

voice, "but I do--you must go away--it isn't worth it--no woman is

worth it."

He turned on her sharply. "Go? You know I can't. What is the use of

suggesting it? Mrs. Erlton! Tara is faithful; but she is faithful to

me--only to me--you must see that surely----"

"If you mean that she loves you--worships the very ground you tread

on," interrupted Kate sharply, "that is evident enough."

"Is that my fault?" he began angrily; "I happened----"

"Thank you, I have no wish to hear the story."

The commonplace, second-rate, mock-dignified phrase came to her lips

unsought, and she felt she could have cried in sheer vexation at

having used it there; in the very face of Death as it were. But Jim

Douglas laughed; laughed good-naturedly.

"I wonder how many years it is since I heard a woman say that? In

another world surely," he said with quite a confidential tone. "But

the fact remains that Tara protects you as my wife, and if I were to

go----"

Kate looked at him with a quick resentment flaming up in her face

beneath the stain.

"I think you are mistaken," she said slowly. "I believe Tara would be

better pleased if--if she knew the truth."

"You mean if I were to tell her you are not my wife?" he replied

quickly. "Why?"

"Because I should be less of a tie to you--because----" She paused,

then added sharply, "Mr. Greyman, I must ask you to tell her the

truth, please. I have a right to so much, surely. I have my reasons

for it, and if you do not, I shall."

Jim Douglas shrugged his shoulders. "In that case I had better tell

her myself; not that I think it matters much one way or another, so

long as I am here. And the whole thing from beginning to end is

chance, nothing but chance."

"Your chance and mine," she murmured half to herself. It was the first

time she had alluded openly to the strange linking of their fates, and

he looked at her almost impatiently.

"Yes! your chance and mine; and we must make the best of it. I'll tell

her as I go out."

But Tara interrupted him at the beginning.

"If the Huzoor means that he does not love the mem as he loved Zora,

that requires no telling, and for the rest what does it matter to this

slave?"

"And it matters nothing to me either," he retorted roughly, "but of

this be sure. Who kills the mem kills me, unless I kill first; and by

Krishnu, and Vishnu, and the lot, I'd as lief kill you, Tara, as

anyone else, if you get in my way."

A great broad flash of white teeth lit up her face as she salaamed,

remarking that the Huzoor's mother must have been as Kunti. And Jim

Douglas understanding the complimentary allusion to the God-visited

mother of the Lunar race, wished as he went downstairs, that he was

like the Five Heroes in one respect, at least, and that was in having

only a fifth part of a woman to look after, instead of two whole ones

who talked of love! So he passed out to listen, and watch, and wait,

while the fire-balloons went up into the velvety sky, replacing the

kites. For May is the month of marriages also, and night after night

these false stars floated out from the Dream-City to form new

constellations on the horizon for a few minutes and then disappear

with a flare into the darkness. Into the darkness whence the master

did not come. Yet, as the month ended, villagers passing in with grain

from Meerut averred that the masters were not all dead, or else God

gave their ghosts a like power in cursing and smiting--which was all

poor folk had to look for; since some had appeared and burned a

village.

Not all dead? The news drifted from market to market, but if it

penetrated through the Palace gates it did not filter through the new

curtains and hangings of the private apartments where the King took

perpetual cooling draughts and wrote perpetual appeals for more

etiquette and decorum. For nothing likely to disturb the unities of

dreams was allowed within the precincts, where every day the old King

sat on a mock peacock throne with a new cushion to it, and listened

for hours to the high-flown letters of congratulation which poured in,

each with its own little covering bag of brocade, from the neighboring

chiefs. And if any day there happened to be a paucity of real ones,

Hussan Askuri could supply them, like other dreams, at so much a

dozen; since nothing more costly than the brocade bag came with them.

So that the Mahboob's face, as Treasurer, grew longer and longer over

the dressmaker's and upholsterer's bills, and the Court Journal was

driven into recording the fact that someone actually presented a

bottle of _Pandamus odoratissimus_, whatever that may be. Some subtle

essence, mayhap, favorable to dreaminess; since, in the month of

peace, drugs were necessary to prevent awakening.

Especially when, on the 30th of May, a sound came over the distant

horizon; the sound of artillery.

At last! At last! Jim Douglas, who, in sheer dread of his own growing

despair, had taken to spending all the time he dared in moody silence

on that peaceful roof, started as if he had been shot, and was down

the stairs seeking news. The streets were full of a silent, restless

crowd, almost empty of soldiers. They had gone out during the night,

he learned, Meerutward; tidings of an army on the banks of the Hindu

river, seven or eight miles out, having been brought in by scouts.

At last! At last! He wandered through the bazaars scarcely able to

think, wondering only when the army could possibly arrive, feeling a

mad joy in the anxious faces around him, lingering by the groups of

men collected in every open space simply for the satisfaction of

hearing the wonder and alarm in the words: "So the master lives."

He lived indeed! Listen! That was his voice over the eastern horizon!

Kate, when he came back to the roof about noon, had never seen him in

this mood before, and wondered at his fire, his gayety, his youth. But

the recognition brought a dull pain with it, in the thought that this

was natural to the man; that gloomy moodiness the result of her

presence.

"You are not afraid, surely?" he said suddenly, breaking off in the

recital of some future event which seemed to him certain.

"No. I am only glad," she replied slowly. "It could not have lasted

much longer. It is a great relief."

"Relief," he echoed, "I wonder if you know the relief it is to me?"

And then he looked at her remorsefully. "I have been an awful brute,

Mrs. Erlton, but women can scarcely understand what inaction means to

a man."

Could they not? she wondered bitterly as he hastened off again,

leaving her to long weary hours of waiting; till the red flush of

sunset on the bubble dome of the mosque brought him back with a new

look on his face; a look of angry doubt.

"The sepoys are coming in again," he said; "they claim a victory--but

that, of course, is impossible. Still I don't understand, and it is so

difficult to get any reliable information."

"You should go out yourself--I believe it would be best for us both,"

replied Kate, "Tara----"

He shook his head impatiently. "Not now. What is the use of risking

all at the last. We can only have to wait till to-morrow. But I don't

understand it, all the same. The sepoys say they surprised the

camp--that the buglers were still calling to arms when their artillery

opened fire. But so far as I can make out they have lost five guns,

and from the amount of bhang they are drinking, I believe it was a

rout. However, if you don't mind, I'll be off again--and--and don't be

alarmed if I stay out."

"I'm not in the least alarmed," she replied. "As I have told you

before, I don't think it is necessary you should come here at all."

He paused at the door to glance back at her half-resentfully. To be

sure she did not know that he had slept on its threshold as a rule;

but anyhow, after eating your heart out over one woman's safety for

three weeks, it was hard to be told that you were not wanted. But,

thank Heaven! the end was at hand. And yet as he lingered round the

watch-fires he heard nothing but boasting, and in more than one of the

mosques thanksgivings were being offered up; while outside the walls

volunteers to complete the task so well begun were assembling to go

forth with the dawn and kill the few remaining infidels. Some drunk

with bhang, more intoxicated by the lust of blood which comes to

fighting races like the Rajpoot with the first blow. It had come to

Soma, as, with fierce face seamed with tears, he told the tale again

and again of his chum's gallant death. How Davee Singh, brother in

arms, his boyhood's playmate, seeing some cowards of artillerymen

abandoning a tumbril full of ammunition to the cursed Mlechchas, had

leaped to it like a black-buck, and with a cry to Kali, Mother of

Death, had fired his musket into it; so sending a dozen or more of the

hell-doomed to their place, and one more brave Rajpoot to Swarga.

"_Jai! Jai! Kâli ma ki jai!_"