"The Huzoor will never remember to forget. He will get into trouble some day," he said reproachfully.

"Not if I stick to playing Yama and Indra," replied Jim Douglas with a shrug of his shoulders. "The Mask of Fate is apt to be inscrutable." He made the remark chiefly for his own benefit; for he was thinking of the strange chance of meeting those cold blue-gray eyes again in that fashion. Beautiful eyes, brilliant eyes! Then he smiled cynically. The chance he had given had evidently borne fruit. She seemed quite happy, and there was no mistaking the look on her owner's heavy face. So the heroics had meant nothing, and he had given up his chance for a vulgar kiss-and-make-it-up-again!

It was too dark to see that look on Major Erlton's face, but it was there, as, carrying Kate off with a certain air of proprietorship from the compliments which had grown stale, they went to find the dog-cart, which, in deference to the mare's nerves, had been told to await them in a quiet corner of the compound.

"You did it splendidly, Kate!"

His voice came contentedly through the soft darkness which hid the easy arm which slipped to her waist, the easy smiling face which bent to kiss hers.

"Oh, don't! Please don't!" The cry, almost a sob, was unmistakable. So was the start which made her stumble over an unseen edging to the path. Even Herbert Erlton with his blunted delicacy could not misjudge it. He stood silent for a moment, then gave a short hard laugh.

"You haven't hurt yourself, I expect," he said dryly, "so there's no harm done. I'll call that fellow with the lantern to give us a light."

He did, and the vague shadow preceded by a swinging light turned out to be young Mainwaring on his pony, with the groom carrying a lantern.

"Mrs. Erlton," cried the lad, slipping to the ground, "what luck! The very person I wanted. I was going round by your house on the chance of catching you, as it was useless trying to get in a quiet word this afternoon. I want to ask if you know of any houses to let! I had a letter this morning from Mrs. Gissing asking me to look out one for her."

"For her?" The echo came in a dull voice. Kate had scarcely recovered from her own recoil, from a vague doubt of what she had done.

"Yes! Her husband had to go home on business and won't be out till May. So, as the new people at Lucknow seem a poor lot, and she has old friends at Delhi----" A remembrance that some of these old friendships must be an unwelcome memory to his hearer made the boy pause. But the man, smarting with resentment, had no such scruples--what was the use of them?

"Coming here, is she?" he echoed. "Then we may hope to have some fun in this deadly-lively stuck-up place. I say, Mainwaring, would you mind driving my wife home and lending me your pony to gallop round to the mess. I must go there, and as it is getting late there is no use dragging Mrs. Erlton all that way. And she has a big Christmas dinner on, haven't you, Kate?"

As the young fellow climbed up into the dog-cart beside her, Kate Erlton knew that one chance had gone irretrievably, irrevocably. Would there be another? Suddenly in the darkness she clasped her hands tight and prayed that there might be--that it might come soon!

And round them as they drove slowly to gain the city gate, the half-seen crowd which had gathered to see the strange spell were drifting homeward to spread the tale of it from hearth to hearth.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE VILLAGE.

The winter rains had come and gone, leaving a legacy of gold behind them. Promise of future gold in the emerald sea of young wheat, guerdon of present gold in the mustard blossom curving on the green, like the crests of waves curving upon a wind-swept northern sea. Far and near, wide as the eye could reach, there was nothing to be seen save this--a waving sea of green wheat crested by yellow mustard. But in the center, whence the eye looked, stood a human ant-hill; for the congeries of mud alleys, mud walls, mud roofs, forming the village, looked from a little distance like nothing else. Viewed broadly, too, it was simply Earth made plastic by the Form-bringer, Water, hardened again by the Sun-fire. The triple elements combined into a shell for laboring life. Like most villages in Northern India this one stood high on its own ruins, girt round by shallow glistening tanks which were at once its cradle and its grave. From them the mud for the first and last house had been dug, to them the periodical rains of August washed back the village bit by bit.

There was scarcely a sign of life in the sky-encircled plain. Scarcely a tree, scarcely a landmark. Nothing far or near to show that aught lay beyond the pale horizon. The crisp, cold air of a mid-January dawn held scarcely a sound, for the village was still asleep. Here and there, maybe, someone was stirring; but with that deliberate calm which comes to those who by virtue of early rising have the world to themselves. Here and there, too, in the high stone inclosures serving at once as a protection to the village and a cattlefold, some goat, impatient to be roaming, bleated querulously; but these sights and sounds only seemed to increase the stillness, the silence surrounding them. It is a scene which to most civilized eyes is oppressive in its self-centered isolation, its air of remoteness. The isolation of a community, self-supporting, self-sufficing, the remoteness of a place which cares not if, indeed, there be a world beyond its boundaries. And this one, type of many alike in most things--above all, in steadfast self-absorption--shall be left nameless. We are in the village, that is enough.

Suddenly an odd, clamorous wail rang from among the green corn, and a band of gray cranes which had been standing knee-deep in the wheat rose awkwardly and headed, arrow-shaped, for the great Nujjufgurhjheel which they wotted of below the horizon: in this displaying a wider outlook than the villagers who toiled and slept within sight of those fields, while the birds left them at dawn for the sedgy stretches of another world.

At the sound a man, who had been crouching half-asleep against a mud wall, rose to his feet and peered drowsily over the fields. Something, he knew, must have startled the gray cranes; and he was the village watchman. As his father had been before him, as his son, please God, would be after him. He carried a short spear hung with jingles as his badge of office, and he leaned upon it lazily as he looked out into the gray dawn. Then he wrapped his blanket closer round him, and walked leisurely to meet the solitary figure coming toward him, threading its way by an invisible path through the dew-hung sea of wheat.

"Ari, brother," he called mildly when he reached earshot, "is it well?"

"It is well," came the answer. So he waited, leaning on his spear, until the newcomer stood beside him, his bare legs glistening and the folds of his drooping blanket frosted with the dew. In one hand he, also, held a watchman's spear; in the other one of those unleavened cakes, round and flat like a pancake, which form the daily bread alike of rich and poor. This he held out, saying briefly:

"For the elders. From the South to the North. From the East to the West."

"Wherefore?" The brief reply held vague curiosity; no more. The cake had already changed hands, unchallenged.

"God knows. It came to us from Goloowallah with the message as I gave it. Thy folk will pass it on?"

"Likely; when the day's work is done. How go the crops thy way? Here, as thou seest, 'tis God's dew on God's grain."

"With us also. There will be marriages galore this May."

"Ay! if this bring naught." The speaker nodded toward the cake which now lay on the ground between them, for they had inevitably squatted down to take alternate pulls at a pipe. "What can it bring?"

"God knows," replied the host in his turn. So the two, with that final reference in their minds, sat looking dully at the chupatti as if it were some strange wild fowl. Sat silently, as men will do over a pipe, till a clinking of anklets and a chatter of feminine voices came round the corner, and the foremost woman of the troop on their way to the tank drew her veil close swiftly at sight of a stranger. Yet her voice came as swiftly. "What news, brother? What news?"

"None for thee, Mother Kirpo," answered the resident watchman tartly. "'Tis for the elders."

The titterings and tossings of veiled heads at this snub to the worst gossip in the village, ended in an expectant pause as a very old woman, with a fine-cut face which had long since forsworn concealment, stepped up to the watchmen, and squatting down beside them, raised the cake in her wrinkled hands.

"From the North to the South or the South to the North. From the East to the West or the West to the East. Which?" she asked, nodding her old head.

"Sure it was so, mother," replied the stranger, surprised. "Dost know aught?"

"Know?" she echoed; "I know 'tis an old tale--an old tale."

"What is an old tale, mother?" asked the women eagerly, as, emboldened by the presence of the village spey-wife, they crowded round, eying the cake curiously.

She gave a scornful laugh, let the chupatti drop, and, rising to her feet, passed on to the tank. It suited her profession to be mysterious, and she knew no more than this, that once, or at most twice in her long life, such a token had come peacefully into the village, and passed out of it as peacefully with its message.

"Mai Dhunnoo knows something, for sure," commented a deep-bosomed mother of sons as the troop followed their "chaperone's" lead, closer serried than before, full of whispering surmise. "The gods send it mean not smallpox. I will give curds and sugar to thee, Mâta jee, each Friday for a year! I swear it for safety to the boys."

"He slipped in a puddle and cried 'Hail to the Ganges,'" retorted her neighbor, an ill-looking woman blind of one eye. She had been the richest heiress in the village, and was in consequence the wife of the handsomest young man in it; a childless wife into the bargain. "Boys do not fill the world, Veru; not even thine! Their welfare will not set tokens a-going. It needs some real misfortune for that."

"Then thy life is safe for sure," began the other hotly, when a peacemaker intervened.

"Wrangle not, sisters! All are naked when their clothes are gone; and the warning may be for us all. Mayhap the Toorks are coming once more--Mai Dhunnoo said 'twas an old tale. God send we be not all reft from our husbands."

"That would I never be," protested the heiress, provoking uproarious titterings among some girls.

"No such luck for poor Ramo," whispered one. "And she sonless too!"

"He shaved for the heat, and then the hail fell on his bald pate," quoted the prettiest callously. "Serve him right, say I. He, at least, had two eyes."

The burst of laughter following this sally made the peacemaker, who, as the wife of the headman, had authority, turn in rebuke. 'Twas no laughing matter to Jâtnis, as they were, who did so much of the field work, that a token, maybe of ill, should come to the village when the harvest promised so well. The revenue had to be paid, smallpox or no smallpox, Toork or no Toork. And was not one of the Huzoors in camp already giving an eye to the look of the crops, and the other to the shooting of wild things? Could they not hear the sound of his gun for themselves if they listened instead of chattering? And truly enough, in the pause which came to mirth, there echoed from the pale northern horizon, beyond which lay the big jheels, a shot or two, faint and far; for all that dealing death to some of God's creatures. And these listeners dealt death to none; their faith forbade it.

"Think you they will come our way and kill our deer as they did once?" asked a slender slip of a girl anxiously. Her tame fawn had lately taken to joining the wild ones when they came at dawn to feed upon the wheat.

"God knows," replied one beside her. "They will come if they like, and kill if they like. Are they not the masters?"

So the final reference was in the women's minds also, as, while the muddy water strained slowly into their pots through a filtering corner of their veils, they raised their eyes curiously, doubtfully, to the horizon which held the master. It had held him always. To the north or to the south, the east or the west. Mohammedan, Mahratta, Christian. But always coming over the far horizon and slaying something. In old days husbands, brothers, fathers. Nowadays the herds of deer which the sacredness of life allowed to have their full of the wheat unchecked, or the peacocks who spread their tails, securely vainglorious, on the heaps of corn upon the threshing floors.

So the unleavened cake stayed in the village all day long, and when the slant shadows brought leisure, the headman's wife baked two cakes, one for the north the other for the west, and Dittu the old watchman, and the embryo watchman his son, set off with them to the next village west and north, since that was the old custom. So much must be done because their fathers had done it; for the rest, who could tell?

Nevertheless, as the messengers passed through the village street where the women sat spinning, many paused to look after them, with a vague relief that the unknown, unsought, had gone out of their life. Then the moon rose peacefully, and one by one the sights and sounds of that life ceased. The latest of all was the hum of a mill in one of the poorest houses, and a snatch of a harvest-song in murmuring accompaniment:

"Have a care, sister, have a care!" came that rebuking voice from the headman's house close by. "Wouldst bring ill-luck on us all, that grinding but millet thou singest the song of wheat?"

And thereinafter there was no song at all, and sleep settled on all things peacefully. The token had come and gone, leaving the mud shell and the laboring life within it as it had been before. Curiously impassive, impassively curious. There was one more portent in the sky, one more mist on the dim horizon. That was all.

So through the dew-hung fields the mysterious message sped west and south.

Sent by whom? And wherefore?

The question was being asked by the masters in desultory fashion as they sat round a bonfire, which blazed in the center of the Resident's camp, on the banks of the great jheel. It was a shooting camp, a standing camp, lavish in comfort. The white tents were ranged symmetrically on three sides of a square, and, in the moonlight, shone almost as brightly as the long levels of water stretching away on the fourth side to the sedgy brakes and isolated palms of the snipe marshes. Behind rose a heavy mass of burnished foliage, and in front of the big mess-tent the English flag drooped from its mast in the still night air. Nearer the jheel again the bonfire flashed and crackled, sending a column of smoke and sparks into the star-set sky. The ground about it was spread with carpets and Persian rugs, and here, in luxurious armchairs, the comfortably-tired sportsmen were lounging after dinner, some of them in mess uniform, some in civilian black, but all in decorous dress; for not only was the Brigadier present, but also a small sprinkling of ladies wrapped in fur cloaks above their evening fineries. Briefly, a company more suitable to the foyer of a theater than this barbaric bonfire. But the whole camp, with its endless luxury, stood out in keen contrast with the sordid savagery of a wretched hamlet which lay half-hidden behind the trees.

The contrast struck Jim Douglas, who for that evening only, happened to be the Resident's guest; for, having been on the jheel in a very different sort of camp when the Resident had invaded his solitude, the usual invitation to dine had followed as a matter of course; as it would have followed to any white face with pretensions to be considered a gentleman's. He had accepted it, because, every now and again, a desire "to chuck" as he expressed it, and go back to the ordinary life of his class came over him. This mood had been on him persistently ever since the Yama and Indra incident, so that, for the time being, he had dismissed his scoundrels and given up spying in disgust. He had, he told himself, wasted his time, and the military magnate was justified in politely dispensing with his further services. There was, in truth, no need for them so far as he could see. There was plenty of talk, plenty of discontent, but nothing more. And even that anyone could observe and gauge; for there was no mystery, no concealment. The whole affair was invertebrate utterly, except every now and again when you came upon the track of the Moulvie of Fyzabad. It was conceivable that the aspect might change, but for the present he was sick of the whole thing, ambition and all. Horse-dealing was better. So he had established himself in a small house in Duryagunj, started a stable, and then taken a holiday in a shooting pâl among the jheels and jungles, where in his younger days he had spent so much of his time.

Thus, after eating a first-class dinner, he was smoking a first-class cigar, and, being a stranger to everyone there, thinking his own thoughts, when the Resident's voice came from the other side of the fire which, with its dancing flame-light distorting every feature in myriad variation, disguised rather than revealed the faces seen by it.

"You have bagged one or two in your district, haven't you, Ford?"

"What, sir? Bustard?" inquired the Collector of the next district, who had come over his border for a day or two's shoot, and who had been engrossed in sporting talk with his neighbor. There was a laugh from the other side of the fire.

"No! these chupatties. The Brigadier was asking me if they were as numerous as they are further south, and Fraser, here, said none had come into the Delhi district as yet."

"One came to-day into the hamlet behind the tents," said Jim Douglas quietly. "I met the man bringing it. A watchman from over the border in Mr. Ford's district."

Half a dozen faces turned to the voice which spoke so confidently, and then asked in whispers who the man was? But there was nothing in the whispered replies to warrant that tone of imparting information to others, and a man in black clothes seemed to resent it, for he appealed to the Resident rather fulsomely.

"It will be in the reports to-morrow, no doubt, sir. For myself I attach no importance to it. The custom is an old one. I remember observing it in Muttra when smallpox was bad. But I should like to have your opinion. You ought to know if anyone does."

The compliment was no idle flattery. None had a better right to it than Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, whose illustrious name had been a power in Delhi for two generations, and whose uncle had been one of India's most distinguished statesmen. So there was a hush for his reply.

"I can't say," he answered deliberately. "Personally I doubt the dissatisfaction ever coming to a head. There is a good deal, of course, but of late, so it has seemed to me, it is quieting down. People are getting tired of fermenting. As for the causes of the disaffection it is patent. We can't, simply, do the work we are doing without making enemies of those whose vested interests we have to destroy. We may have gone ahead a little too fast; but that is another question. As for the army, I've no right to speak of it, but it seems to me it has been allowed to get out of hand, out of touch. It will need care to bring it into discipline, but I don't anticipate trouble. Its mixed character is our safeguard. It would be hard for even a good leader to hit on a general grievance which would touch both the army and the civil population, Hindoos and Mohammedans--and as a matter of fact they have no leader at all."

"Have you ever come across the Moulvie of Fyzabad, sir?" remarked Jim Douglas again. "If I had the power I would shoot him like a mad dog. But for the rest I quite agree."

Here a stir behind them distracted both his attention and the attention of those who were listening to this authoritative voice with bated breath.

"Is that the post? Oh, how delightful!" chorused the ladies, and more than one added plaintively, "I wonder if the English mail is in."

"Let's bet on it. Sir Theophilus to hold the stakes," cried a young fellow who had been yawning through the discussion. But the subject was too serious for such light handling, to judge by the eager faces which crowded round, while the red-coated chuprassies poured the contents of the bags into a heap on the carpet at their master's feet. There is always a suspense about that moment of search among the bundles of official correspondence, the files, the cases which fill up the camp mail, for the thin packet of private letters which is the only tie between you and the world; but when hopes of home news is superadded, the breath is apt to come faster. And so a scene, trivial in itself, points an inexorable finger to the broad fact underlying all our Indian administration, that we are strangers and exiles.

"Not in!" announced the Resident, studiously cheerful. "But there are heaps of letters for everybody. Did the mem-sahib come in the carriage, Gâmu?" he added as he sorted out the owners.

"Huzoor!" replied the head orderly, who was also his master's factotum, thrusting the remainder back in the bags. "And the Major sahib also. According to order, refreshments are being offered."

"Glad Erlton could come," remarked a voice to its neighbor. "We want another good shot badly."

"And Mrs. Gissing is awfully good company too," assented the neighbor. Jim Douglas, who was sitting on the other side, looked up quickly. The juxtaposition of the names surprised him after what he had seen, or thought he had seen at Christmas time.

"Is that Mrs. Gissing from Lucknow?" he asked.

"I believe so. She is a stranger here. Seems awfully jolly, but the women don't like her. Do you know anything of her?"

Jim Douglas hesitated. He could have easily satisfied the ear evidently agog for scandal; but what, after all, did he know of her? What did he know of his own experience? It seemed to him as if she stood there, defiantly dignified, asking him the question, her china-blue eyes flashing, the childish face set and stern.

"Personally I know little," he replied, "but that little is very much to her credit."

As he relapsed into silence and smoke he felt that she had once more walked boldly into his consciousness and claimed recognition. She had forced him to acknowledge something in her which corresponded with something in him. Something unexpected. If Kate Erlton's eyes with their cold glint in them had flashed like that, he would not have wondered; but they had not. They had done just the reverse. They had softened; they had only looked heroic. Underneath the glint which had sent him on a wild-goose chase had lain that commonplace indefinable womanhood, sweet enough, but a bit sickly, which could be in any woman's eyes if you fancied yourself in love with her. It had lain in the eyes belonging to the golden curl, in poor little Zora's eyes, might conceivably lie in half a dozen others.

"By George!" came an eager voice from the group of men who were reading their letters by the light of a lamp held for the purpose by a silent bronze image of a man in uniform. "I have some news here which will interest you, sir. There has been a row at Dum-Dum about the new Enfield cartridges."

"Eh! what's that?" asked the Brigadier, looking up from his own correspondence. "Nothing serious, I hope."

"Not yet, but it seems curious by the light of what we were discussing, and what Mr.--er--Capt----"

"Douglas," suggested the owner of the name, who at the first words had sat up to listen intently. His face had a certain anticipation in it; almost an eagerness.

"Thanks. It's a letter from the musketry depot. Shall I read it, sir?"

The Brigadier nodded, one or two men looked up to listen, but most went on with their letters or discussed the chances of slaughter for the morrow.

"There is a most unpleasant feeling abroad respecting these new cartridges, which came to light a day or two ago in consequence of a high-caste sepoy refusing to let a lower caste workman drink out of his cup. The man retorted that as the cartridges being made in the Arsenal were smeared with pig's grease and cow's fat there would soon be no caste left in the army. The sepoy complained, and it came out that this idea is already widely spread. Wright denied the fact flatly at first, but found out that large quantities of beef-tallow had been indented for by the Ordnance. And that, of course, made the men think he had lied about it. Bontein, the chief, has wisely suggested altering the drill, since the men say they will not bite the cartridges. If they do, their relations won't eat with them when they go home on leave. You see, with this new rifle it is not really necessary to bite the cartridge at all, so it would be a quite natural alteration, and get us out of the difficulty without giving in. The suggestion has been forwarded, and if it could be settled sharp would smother the business; but what with duffers and----" The reader broke off, and a faint smile showed even on the Brigadier's face as the former skipped hurriedly to find something safer--"Old General Hearsey, who knows the natives like a book, says there is trouble in it. He declares that the Moulvie of Fyzabad--whoever that may be----"

The faces looked at Jim Douglas curiously, but he was too eager to notice it.

"Is at the bottom of the chupatties we hear are being sent round up-country; but that he is in league also with the Brahmins in Calcutta--especially the priests at Kali's shrine--over suttee and widow remarriage and all that. However, all I know is that both Hindoos and Mohammedans in my classes are in a blue funk about the cartridges, and swear even their wives won't live with them if they touch them."

"The common grievance," said Jim Douglas, in the silence that ensued. "It alters the whole aspect of affairs."

"Prepare to receive cavalry?" yawned the man who had suggested betting on the chance of the home-mail. What was the use of a week's leave on the best snipe jheel about, if it was to be spent in talking shop?

"No!" cried the man in black, not unwilling to change the subject of which he had not yet official cognizance. "Prepare to receive ladies. There is Mrs. Gissing, looking as fresh as paint!"

She looked fresh, indeed, as she came forward; her curly hair, rough when fashionable heads were smooth, glistening in the firelight, the fluffy swansdown on her long coat framing her childish face softly. Behind her, heavy, handsome, came Major Erlton with the half-sheepish air men assume when they are following a woman's lead.

"Here I am at last, Sir Theophilus," she began, in a gay artificial voice as she passed Jim Douglas, who stood up, pushing his chair aside to give more room. "I'm so glad Major Erlton managed to get leave. I'm such a coward! I should have died of fright all by myself in that long, lonely----"

"Keep still!" interrupted a peremptory voice behind her, as a pair of swift unceremonious arms seized her round the waist, and by sheer force dragged her back a step, then held her tight-clasped to something that beat fast despite the calm tone. "Kill that snake, someone! There, right at her feet! It isn't a branch. I saw it move. Don't stir, Mrs. Gissing, it's all right."

It might be, but the heart she felt beat hard; and the one beneath his hand gave a bound and then seemed to stand still, as the sticks and staves, hastily caught up, smote furiously on her very dress, so close did certain death lie to her. There was a faint scent of lavender about that dress, about her curly hair, which Jim Douglas never forgot; just as he never forgot the passionate admiration which made his hands relax to an infinite tenderness, when she uttered no cry, no sound; when there was no need to hold her, so still did she stand, so absolutely in unison with the defiance of Fate which kept him steady as a rock. Surely no one in all his life, he thought, had ever stood so close to him, yet so far off!

"God bless my soul! My dear lady, what an escape!" The hurried faltering exclamation from a bystander heralded the holding up of a long limp rope of a thing hanging helplessly over a stick. It was the signal for a perfect babel. Many had seen the brute, but had thought it a branch, others had similar experiences of drowsy snakes scorched out of winter quarters in some hollow log, and all crowded round Mrs. Gissing, loud in praise of her coolness. Only she turned quickly to see who had held her; and found Major Erlton.

"The brute hasn't touched you, has he?" he began huskily, then broke into almost a sob of relief, "My God! what an escape!"

She glanced at him with the faint distaste which any expression of strong emotion showed toward her by a man always provoked, and gave one of her high irrelevant laughs.

"Is it? I may die a worse death. But I want him--where is he?"

"Slipped away from your gratitude, I expect," said the Collector. "But I'll betray him. It was the man who knew about the chupatties, Sir Theophilus; I don't know his name."

"Douglas," said the host. "He is in camp a mile or two down the jheel. I expect he has gone back. He seemed a nice fellow."

Mrs. Gissing made a moue. "I would not have been so grateful as all that! I would only have said 'Bravo' to him."

Her own phrase seemed to startle her, she broke off with a sudden wistful look in her wide blue eyes.

"My dear Mrs. Gissing, have a glass of wine; you must indeed," fussed the Brigadier. But the little lady set the suggestion aside.

"Douglas!" she repeated. "I wonder where he comes from? Does anyone know a Douglas?"

"James Sholto Douglas," corrected the host. "It's a good name."

"And I knew a good fellow of that name once; but he went under," said an older man.

"About what?" Alice Gissing's eyes challenged the speaker, who stood close to her.

"About a woman, my dear lady."

"Poor dear! Erlton, you must fetch him over to see me to-morrow morning." She said it with infinite verve, and her hearers laughed.

"Him!" retorted someone. "How do you know it's the same man?"

She nodded her head gayly. "I've a fancy it is. And I am bound to be nice to him anyhow."

She had not the chance, however. Major Erlton, riding over before breakfast to catch him, found nothing but the square-shaped furrow surrounding a dry vacant spot which shows where a tent has been.

For Jim Douglas was already on his way back to Delhi, on his way back to more than Delhi if he succeeded in carrying out a plan which had suggested itself to him when he heard of General Hearsey's belief that the priests conducting the agitation against widow remarriage and the abolition of suttee were leagued with the Mohammedan revival. Tara, the would-be saint, was still in Delhi. He had not sought her out before, being in truth angry with the woman's duplicity, and not wanting to run the risk of her chattering about him. Now, as he had said, the whole position was changed. He had no common hold upon her, and might through her get some useful hints as to the leading men in the movement. She must have seen them when the miracle took place at Benares. The thought made him smile rather savagely. Decidedly she would not care to defy his tongue; from saint to sinner would be too great a fall.

So at dusk that very evening he was back in his mendicant's disguise, begging at a doorway in one of the oldest parts of Delhi. An insignificant doorway in an insignificant alley. But there was a faded wreath of yellow marigolds over the architrave, a deeper hollow in the stone threshold; sure signs, both, that something to attract worshiping feet lay within. Yet at first sight the court into which you entered, after a brief passage barred by blank wall, was much as other courts. It was set round with high irregular houses, perfect rabbit-warrens of tiny rooms, slips of roof, and stairs; all conglomerate, yet distinct. Some reached from within, some from without, some from neighboring roofs, and some, Heaven knows how! possibly by wings, after the fashion of the purple pigeons cooing and sidling on the purple brick cornices. In one corner, however, stood a huge peepul-tree, and partly shaded by this, partly attached to an arcaded building of two stories, was a small, squalid-looking, black stone Hindoo temple. It was not more than ten feet square, triply recessed at each corner, and with a pointed spire continuing the recesses of the base. A sort of hollow monolith raised on a plinth of three steps. In its dark windowless sanctuary, open to the outside world by a tingle arch, stood a polished black stone, resting on a polished black stone cup, like a large acorn. For this was the oldest Shivâla in Delhi, and in the rabbit-warrens surrounding this survival of Baal worship lived and lodged yogis, beggars, saints, half the insanity and sacerdotalism of Delhi. It was not a place into which to venture rashly. So Jim Douglas sat at the gate begging while the clashings and brayings and drumings echoed out into the alley. For the seven fold circling of the Lamps was going on, and if Tara did not pass to this evening service from outside, she most likely lived within; that she lodged near the temple he knew.

So as he sat waiting, watching, the light faded, the faint smell of incense grew fainter, the stream of worshipers coming to take the holy water in which the god had been washed slackened. Then by twos and threes the Brahmins and yogis--the Dean and Chapter, as it were--passed out clinking half-pennies, and carrying the offertory in kind, tied up in handkerchiefs.

The service was over, and Tara must therefore live in a lodging reached from within. And now, when the coast was clearing, he might still have opportunity of tracing her. So he rose and walked in boldly, disappointed to find the courtyard was almost empty already. There were only a few stragglers, mostly women, and they in the white shroud of widows; but even in the gloom and shadow he could see the tall figure he sought was not among them, and he was about to slip away when, following their looks, he caught sight of another figure crouching on the topmost step of the plinth, right in front of the sanctuary door, so that it stood faintly outlined against the glimmer of the single cresset, which, raised on the heap of half-dead flowers within, showed them and nothing more--nothing but the shadows.

He drew back hastily into the empty arcade, and waited for the widows' lingering bare feet--scarcely heard even on those echoing stones--to pass out and leave him and Tara alone. For it was Tara. That he knew though her face was turned from him.

The feet lingered on, making him fear lest some of the mendicants who must lodge in these arcades should return, after almsgiving time, and find him there. And as they lingered he thought how he had best make himself known to the devotee, the saint. It must be something dramatic, something to tie her tongue at once, something to bring home to her his hold upon her. The locket! He slipped it from his neck and stood ready. Then, as the last flutter of white disappeared, he stepped noiselessly across the court.

And so, suddenly, between the rapt face and the dim light on which its eyes were fixed, hung a dangling gold oval, and the Englishman, bending over the woman's shoulder from behind, could see the amaze flash to the face. And his other hand was ready with the clutch of command, his tongue with a swift threat; but she was too quick for him. She was round at his feet in an instant, clasping them.

"Master! Master!"

Jim Douglas recoiled from that touch once more; but with a half-shamed surprise, regret, almost remorse. He had meant to threaten this woman, and now----

She was up again, eager, excited. "Quick! The Huzoor is not safe here. They may return any moment. Quick! Quick! Huzoor, follow me."

And as, blindly, he obeyed, passing rapidly through a low doorway and so up a dark staircase, he slipped the locket back to its place with a sort of groan. Here was another woman to be reckoned with, and though the discovery suited his purpose, and though he knew himself to be as safe as her woman's wit could make him, he wondered irritably if there was anything in the world into which this eternal question of sex did not intrude. And then, suddenly, he seemed to feel Alice Gissing's heart beat beneath his hand; there had been no womanhood in that touch.

So he passed on. And next morning he was on his way southward. Tara had told him what he wanted to know.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE RESIDENCY.

"Strawberries! Oh, how delightful!"

Kate Erlton looked with real emotion at a plate of strawberries and cream which Captain Morecombe had just handed to her. "They are the first I have ever seen in India," she went on in almost pathetic explanation of her apparent greed. "Where could Sir Theophilus have got them?"

"Meerut," replied her cavalier with a kindly smile. "They grow up-country. But they put one in mind of home, don't they?" He turned away, almost embarrassed, from the look in her eyes; and added, as if to change the subject, "The Resident does it splendidly, does not he?"

There could be no two opinions as to that. The park-like grounds were kept like an English garden, the house was crammed from floor to ceiling with works of art, the broad verandas were full of rare plants, and really valuable statuary. That toward the river, on the brink of which Metcalfe House stood, gave on a balustraded terrace which was in reality the roof of a lower story excavated, for the sake of coolness, in the bank itself. Here, among others, was the billiard room, from the balcony of which you could see along the curved stone embankment of the river to the Koodsia garden, which lay between Metcalfe Park and the rose-red wall of the city. It was an old pleasure-ground of the Moghuls, and a ruined palace, half-hidden in creepers, half lost in sheer luxuriance of blossom, still stood in its wilderness of forest trees and scented shrubs; a very different style of garden from that over which Kate Erlton looked, as it undulated away in lawns and drives between the Ridge and the river.

"Yes!" she said, "it always reminds me of England; but for that----" She pointed to the dome of a Mohammedan tomb which curved boldly into the blue sky close to the house.

"Yet that is the original owner," replied her companion. "There is rather an odd story about that tomb, Mrs. Erlton. It is the burial place of the great Akhbar's foster-brother. Most likely he was a cowherd by caste, for their women often go out as nurses, and the land about here all belonged to these Goojers, as they are called. But when we occupied Delhi, a civilian--one Blake--fancied the tomb as a house, added to it, and removed the good gentleman's grave-stone to make room for his dining-table--a hospitable man, no doubt, as the Resident is now. But the Goojers objected, appealed to the Government agent. In vain. Curiously enough both those men were, shortly afterward, assassinated."

"You don't mean to connect----" began Kate in a tone of remonstrance.

Captain Morecombe laughed. "In India, Mrs. Erlton, it is foolish to try and settle which comes first, the owl or the egg. You can't differentiate cause and effect when both are incomprehensible. But if I were Resident I should insure myself and my house against the act of God and the Queen's enemies."

"But this house?" she protested.

"Is built on the site of a Goojer village, and they were most unwilling to sell. One could hardly believe it now, could one? Come and see the river terrace. It is the prettiest place in Delhi at this time of the year."

He was right; for the last days of March, the first ones of April are the crown and glory of a Northern Indian garden. Perhaps because there is already that faint hint of decay which makes beauty more precious. Another short week and the flower-lover going the evening round will find many a sun-weary head in the garden. But on this glorious afternoon, when the Resident was entertaining Delhi in right residential fashion, there was not a leaf out of place, a blade of grass untrimmed. Long lines of English annuals in pots bordered the broad walks evenly, the scentless gardenia festooned the rows of cypress in disciplined freedom, the roses had not a fallen petal, though the palms swept their long fringes above them boldly, and strange perfumed creepers leaped to the branches of the forest trees. In one glade, beside an artificial lake, some ladies in gay dresses were competing for an archery prize. On a brick dais close to the house the band of a native regiment was playing national airs, and beside it stood a gorgeous marquee of Cashmere shawls with silver poles and Persian carpets; the whole stock and block having belonged to some potentate or another, dead, banished, or annexed. Here those who wished for it found rest in English chairs or Oriental divans; and here, contrasting with their host and his friends, harmonizing with the Cashmere shawl marquee, stood a group of guests from the palace. A perfect bevy of princes, suave, watchful, ready at the slightest encouragement to crowd round the Resident, or the Commissioner, or the Brigadier, with noiseless white-stockinged feet. Equally ready to relapse into stolid indifference when unnoticed. Here was Mirza Moghul, the King's eldest son, and his two supporters, all with lynx eyes for a sign, a hint, of favor or disfavor. And here--a sulky, sickly looking lad of eighteen--was Jewun Bukht, Zeenut Maihl's darling, dressed gorgeously and blazing with jewels which left no doubt as to who would be the heir-apparent if she had her way. Prince Abool-Bukr, however, scented, effeminate, watched the proceedings with bright eyes; giving the ladies unabashed admiration and after a time actually strolling away to listen to the music. Finally, however, drifting to the stables to gamble with the grooms over a quail fight. Then there were lesser lights. Ahsan-Oolah the physician, his lean plausible face and thin white beard suiting his black gown and skull-cap, discussed the system of Greek medicine with the Scotch surgeon, whose fluent, trenchant Hindustani had an Aberdonian twang. Then there was Elahi Buksh, whose daughter was widow of the late heir-apparent; a wily man, dogging the Resident's steps with persistent adulation, and watched uneasily by all the other factions. A few rich bankers curiously obsequious to the youngest ensign, and one or two pensioners owing their invitations to loyal service, made up the company, which kept to the Persian carpets so as to avoid the necessity for slipping on and off the shoes which lay in rows under Gâmu the orderly's care, and the consequent necessity for continual fees. For Gâmu piled up the shekels until his master, after the mutiny, had reluctantly to hang him for extorting blood-, as well as shoe-money.

They were a curious company, these palace guests, aliens in their own country, speaking to none save high officials, caring to speak to none, and waiting with ill-concealed yawns for the blunt dismissal or the ceremonious leave-taking after a decent space of boredom due to their rank.

"I wonder they come," said Mrs. Erlton, passing on rapidly to escape from the loud remarks of two of her countrywomen who were discussing Jewun Bukht's jewels as if the wearer, standing within a yard of them, was a lay figure: as indeed he was to them.

"Why does anyone come?" asked Captain Morecombe airily, as he followed her across the terrace, and, leaning over the balustrade, looked down at the sandbanks and streams below. "So far as I am concerned," he went on, "the reason is palpable. I came because I knew you would be here, and I like to see my friends."

He was in reality watching her to see how she received the remark, and something in her face made him continue casually. "And there, I should say, are some other people who have similar excuse for temporary aberration." He pointed to the figures of a man and woman who were strolling toward the Koodsia along a narrow path which curved below the embanking wall, and his sentence ended abruptly. He turned hastily to lean his back on the parapet and look parkward, adding lightly, "And there are two more, and two more! In fact most people really come to see other people."

But Kate Erlton was proud. She would have no evasion, and the past three months since Christmas Day had forced her to accept facts.

"It is my husband and Mrs. Gissing," she said, looking toward the strolling figures. "I suppose he is seeing her home. I heard her say not long ago she was tired. She hasn't been looking strong lately."

The indifference, being slightly overdone, annoyed her companion. No man likes having the door slammed in his sympathetic face. "She is looking extremely pretty, though," he replied coolly. "It softens her somehow. Don't you agree with me?"

There was a pause ere Kate Erlton replied; and then her eyes had found the far horizon instead of those lessening figures.

"I do. I think she looks a better woman than she did--somehow." She spoke half to herself with a sort of dull wonder in her voice. But the keenness of his, shown in his look at her, roused her reserve instantly. To change the subject would be futile; she had gone too far to make that possible if he wished otherwise, without that palpable refusal which would in itself be confession. So she asked him promptly if he would mind bringing her a glass of iced water, cup, anything, since she was thirsty after the strawberries; and when he went off reluctantly, took her retreat leaning over the balustrade, looking out to the eastern plains beyond the river; to that far horizon which in its level edge looked as if all or nothing might lie behind it. A new world, or a great gulf!

Three months! Three months since she had given up that chance, such as it was, on Christmas Day. And now her husband was honestly, truly in love with Alice Gissing. Would he have been as honestly, as truly in love with her if--if she could have forgotten? Had this really been his chance, and hers? Had it come, somehow? She did not attempt to deny facts; she was too proud for that It seemed incredible, almost impossible; but this was no Lucknow flirtation, no mere sensual liaison on her husband's part. He was in love. The love which she called real love, which, given to her, would, she admitted, have raised her life above the mere compromise from which she had shrunk. But he had never given it to her. Never. Not even in those first days. And now, if that chance had gone, what remained? What disgrace might not the future hold for her boy's father with a man like Mr. Gissing, in a country where the stealing of a man's wife from him was a criminal offense? Thank Heaven! Herbert was too selfish to risk--she turned and fled, as it were, from that cause for gratitude to find refuge in the certainty that Alice Gissing, at least, would not lose her head. But the chance the chance was gone.

"Miffes Erlton," came a little silvery voice behind her. "Oh, Miffes Erlton! He's giv-ded me suts a boo'ful birdie."

It was Sonny clasping a quail in both dimpled hands. His bearer was salaaming in rather a deprecatory manner, and a few paces off, strolling back from the stables with a couple of young bloods like himself, was Prince Abool-Bukr. All three with a furtive eye for Kate Erlton's face and figure.

"He giv-ded it to me be-tos it tumbied down, and everybody laughed," went on Sonny confidently. "And so I is do-ing to comfit birdie, and 'ove it."

"Sonny," exclaimed Kate, suddenly aghast, "what's that on your frock-- down your arm?"

It was blood. Red, fresh-spilled blood! She was on her knees beside him in instant coaxing, comforting, unclasping his hands to see where they were hurt. The bird fell from them fluttering feebly, leaving them all scarlet-stained with its heart's blood, making Sonny shriek at the sight, and hide face and hands in her muslin skirts. She stood up again, her cheeks ablaze with anger, and turned on the servant.

"How dare you! How dare you give it to the chota-sahib? How dare you!"

The man muttered something in broken English and Hindustani about a quail fight, and not knowing the bird was dying when the Mirza gave it; accompanying his excuses with glances of appeal to Prince Abool-Bukr, who, at Sonny's outburst, had paused close by. Kate's eyes, following the bearer's, met those bright, dark, cruel ones, and her wrath blazed out again. Her Hindustani, however, being unequal to a lecture on cruelty to animals, she had to be content with looks. The Prince returned them with an indifferent smile for a moment, then with a half-impatient shrug of his shoulders, he stepped forward, lifted the dying quail gingerly between finger and thumb, and flung it over the parapet into the river.

"Ab khutm piyâree tussulli rukhiye!" (Now is it finished, dear one; take comfort!) he said consolingly, looking at Sonny's golden curls. The liquid Urdu was sheer gibberish to the woman, but the child turning his head half-doubtfully, half-reassured, Abool-Bukr's face softened instantly.

"Mujhe muaâf. Murna sub ke hukk hai" (Excuse me. Death is the right of all), he said with a graceful salaam as he passed on.

So the water Captain Morecombe brought back was used for a different purpose than quenching pretended thirst; and the bringer, hearing Kate's version of the story, hastily asked Sonny--who by this time was holding out chubby hands cheerfully to be dried and prattling of dirty birdies--what the Prince had said. The child, puzzled for an instant, smiled broadly.

"He said it was deaded all light."

Kate shivered. The incident had touched her on the nerves, taking the color from the flowers, the brightness from the sunshine.

"Come and have a turn," suggested Captain Morecombe; "they have began dancing in the saloon. It will change the subject."

But as she took his arm, she said in rather a tremulous voice, "There is such a thing as a Dance of Death, though."

"My dear lady," he laughed, "it is a most excellent pastime. And one can dance anywhere, on the edge of a volcano even, if one doesn't smell brimstone."

Kate, however, found otherwise, and when the waltz was over, announced her intention of going off to take Sonny home, and see Mrs. Seymour and the new baby. But in this her cavalier saw difficulties. The mare was evidently too fresh for a lady to drive, and Major Erlton, returning, might need the dog-cart. It would be far better for him to drive her in his, so far, and afterward let the Major know he had to call for her. Kate assented wearily. Such arrangements were part of the detail of life, with a woman neglected as she was by her husband. She could not deliberately avoid them, and yet keep the unconsciousness her pride claimed. How could she, when there were twenty men in society to one woman? Twenty--for the most part--gentlemen, quite capable of gauging a woman's character. So Captain Morecombe drove her to the Seymour's house on the city wall by the Water Bastion. There were several houses there, set so close to the rampart that there was barely room for a paved pathway between their back verandas and the battlement. In front of them lay a metaled road and shady gardens; and at the end of this road stood a small bungalow toward which Kate Erlton looked involuntarily. There was a horse waiting outside it. It was her husband's charger. He must have arranged to have it sent down, arranged, as it were, to leave her in the lurch, and a sudden flash of resentment made her say, as she got down at the Seymours' house, "You had better call for me in half an hour; that will be best."

Captain Morecombe flushed with sheer pleasure. Kate was not often so encouraging. But as he drove round to wait for her at a friend's house, close to the Delhi Gazette press, he, too, noticed the Major's charger, and swore under his breath. Before God it was too bad! But if ever there were signs of a coming smash they were to be seen here. Erlton, after years of scandal, had lost his head--it seemed incredible, but there was a Fate in such things from which mortal man could not escape.

And as he told himself this tale of Fate--the man's excuse for the inexcusable which will pass current gayly until women combine in refusing to accept it for themselves--another man, at the back of the little house past which he was driving, was telling it to himself also. For a great silence had fallen between Major Erlton and Alice Gissing after she had told him something, to hear which he had arranged to come home with her for a quiet talk. And, in the silence, the hollow note of the wooden bells upon the necks of the cattle grazing below the battlement, over which he leaned, seemed to count the slow minutes. Quaintest, dumbest of all sounds, lacking vibration utterly, yet mellow, musical, to the fanciful ear, with something of the hopeful persistency of Time in its recurring beat.

Alice Gissing was not a fanciful woman, but as she lay back in her long cane chair, her face hidden in its pillows as if to shut out something unwelcome, her foot kept time to the persistency on the pavement, till, suddenly, she sat up and faced round on her silent companion.

"Well," she said impatiently. "Well! what have you got to say?"

"I--I was thinking," he began helplessly, when she interrupted him.

"What is the use of thinking? That won't alter facts. As I told you, Gissing will be back in a month or so; and then we must decide."

Major Erlton turned quickly. "You can't go back to him, Allie; you weren't considering that, surely. You can't--not--not now." His voice softened over the last words; he turned away abruptly. His face was hidden from her so.

She looked toward him strangely for a second, covered her face with her hands for another, then, changing the very import of the action, used them to brush the hair back from her temples; so, clasping them behind her head, leaned back on the pillows, and looked toward him again. There was a reckless defiance in her attitude and expression, but her words did not match it.

"I suppose I can't," she said drearily, "and I suppose you wouldn't let me go away by myself either."

Once more he turned. "Go!" he echoed quickly. "Where would you go?"

"Somewhere!"--the recklessness had invaded her voice now--"Anywhere! Wherever women do go in these cases. To the devil, perhaps."

He gave a queer kind of laugh; this spirited effrontery had always roused his admiration. "I dare say," he replied, "for I'm not a saint, and you have got to come with me, Allie. You must. I shall send in my papers, and by and by, when all the fuss is over"--here he gave a fierce sigh--"for I expect Gissing will make a fuss, we can get married and live happily ever after."

She shook her head. "You'll regret it. I don't see how you can help regretting it!"

He came over to her, and laid his big broad hand very tenderly on her curly hair. "No! I shan't, Allie," he replied in a low, husky voice, "I shan't, indeed. I never was a good hand at sentiment and that sort, but I love you dearly--dearly. All the more--for this that you've told me. I'd do anything for you, Allie. Keep straight as a die, dear, if you wanted it. And I wasn't regretting--it--just now. I was only thinking how strange----"

"Strange!" she interrupted, almost fiercely. "If it is strange to you, what must it be to me? My God! I wonder if any man will ever understand what this means to a woman? All the rest seems to pass her by, to leave no mark--I--I--never cared. But this! Herbert! I feel sometimes as if I were Claude's wife again--Claude's wife, so full of hopes and fears. And I dream of him too. I haven't dreamed of him for years, and I learned to hate him before he died, you know. I have gone back to that old time, and nothing seems different. Nothing at all! Isn't that strange? And the old Mai--she has gone back, too--sees no difference either. She treats me just as she did in those old, old days. She fusses round, and cockers me up, and talks about it. There! she is coming now with smelling-salts or sal-volatile or something! Oh! Go away, do, Mai, I don't want anything except to be left alone!"

But the old ayah's untutored instincts were not to be so easily smothered. Her wrinkled face beamed as she insisted on changing the dainty laced shoes for easy slippers, and tucked another pillow into the chair. The mem was tired, she told the Major with a respectful salaam, after her long walk; the faint resentment in her tone being entirely for the latter fact.

"You see, don't you?" said Mrs. Gissing, with bright reckless eyes, when they were alone once more. "She doesn't mind. She has forgotten all the years between, forgotten everything. And I--I don't know why--but there! What is the use of asking questions? I never can answer even for myself. So we had better leave it alone for the present. We needn't settle yet a while, and there is always a chance of something happening."

"But you said your husband would be back----" he began.

"In a month--but we may all be dead and buried in a month," she interrupted. "I only told you now, because I thought you ought to know soon, so as not to be hurried at the last. It means a lot, you see, for a man to give up his profession for a woman; and it isn't like England, you know----" She paused, then continued in an odd half-anxious voice, her eyes fixed on him inquiringly as he stood beside her. "I shouldn't be angry, remember, Herbert, if--if you didn't."

"Allie! What do you mean? Do you mean that you don't care?" His tone was full of pained surprise, his hand scarcely a willing agent as she drew it close to caress it with her cheek.

"Care? of course I care. You are very good to me, Herbert, far nicer to me than you are to other people. And I can't say 'no' if you decide on giving up for me. I can't now. I see that. Only don't let us be in a hurry. As that big fat man in the tight satin trousers said to the Resident to-day, when he was asked what the people in the city thought of the fuss down country, 'Delhi dur ust.'"

"Delhi dur ust? What the devil does that mean?" asked the Major, his brief doubt soothed by the touch of her soft cheek. "You are such a clever little cat, Allie! You know a deuced sight more than I do. How you pick it up I can't think."

She gave one of her inconsequent laughs. "Don't have so many men anxious to explain things to you as I have, I expect, sir! But if you ever spoke to a native here--which you don't--you'd know that. Even my old Mai says it--they all say it when they don't want to tell the truth, or be hurried, and that is generally. 'Delhi is far,' they say. Dr. Macintyre translates it as 'It's a far cry to Lochawe'; but I don't understand that; for it was an old King of Delhi who said it first. People came and told him an enemy had crossed his border. 'Delhi dur ust,' says he. Can't you see him, Herbert? An old Turk of a thing with those tight satin trousers! Then they told him the enemy was in sight. 'Delhi dur ust,' said he. And he said it when they were at the gate--he said it when their swords----" the dramatic instinct in her was strong, and roused her into springing to her feet and mimicking the thrust. "Delhi dur ust."

Her gay mocking voice rang loud. Then she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Let us say it too, dear," she said almost sharply. "I won't think--yet. 'Delhi dur ust.'"

The memory of the phrase went with him when he had said good-by, and was pacing his charger toward the Post Office. But it only convinced him that the Delhi of his decision was reached; he would chuck everything for Allie.

It was by this time growing dusk, but he could see two figures standing in the veranda of the Press Office, and one of them called him by name. He turned in at the gate to find Captain Morecombe reading a proof-sheet by the light of a swinging lamp; for Jim Douglas drew back into unrecognizable shadow as he approached. He had purposely kept out of Major Erlton's way during his occasional returns to Delhi, and as he stepped back now he asked himself if he hated the big man most for his own sake, or for Kate's, or for that other little woman's. Not that it mattered a jot, since he hated him cordially on all three scores.

"Bad news from Barrackpore, Erlton," said the Captain, "and as I have to drive Mrs. Erlton home I thought you might take it round to the Brigadier's. At least if you have no objection, Douglas?"

"None. The telegram is all through the bazaar by now. You can't help it if you employ natives."

"'Through the medium of a private telegram,'" read Captain Morecombe, "'the following startling news has reached our office. On Sunday (the 29th of March) about 4.30 P. M., a Brahmin sepoy of the 34th N. I.'--that's the missionary fellow's regiment, of course--'went amuck, and rushing to the quarter-guard with his musket, ordered the bugler to sound the assembly to all who desired to keep the faith of their fathers. The guard, ordered to arrest him, refused. The whole regiment being, it is said, in alarm at the arrival that morning of the first detachment of British troops, detailed to keep order during the approaching disbandment of the 19th for mutiny; rumor having it that all sepoys then refusing to become Christians would be shot down at once. The mutineer, who had been drinking hemp, actually fired at Sergeant-major Hewson, providentially missing him; subsequently he fired at the Adjutant, who, after a hand-to-hand scuffle with the madman, in which Hewson joined, only escaped with his life through the aid of a faithful Mohammedan orderly. Until, and, indeed, after Colonel Wheler the Commandant arrived on the parade ground, the mutineer marched up and down in front of the guard, flourishing his musket and calling for his comrades to join him. The Colonel therefore ordered the guard to advance and shoot the man down. The men made show of obedience, but after a few steps they refused to go on, unless accompanied by a British officer. On this, Colonel Wheler, considering the risk needless with an unreliable guard already half-mutinous, rode off to report his failure to the Brigadier, who had halted on the further side of the parade ground. At this juncture (about 5.30 P. M.) matters looked most serious. The 43d N. I. had turned out, and were barely restrained from rushing their bells of arms by the entreaties of their native officers. The 34th, beyond control altogether, were watching the mutineer's unchecked defiance with growing sympathy. Fortunately at this moment General Hearsey, commanding the Division, rode up, followed by his two sons as aides. Hearing what had occurred from the group of officers awaiting further developments, he galloped over to the guard, ordered them to follow him, and made straight for the mutineer; shouting back, "D----n his musket, sir!" to an officer who warned him it was loaded. But seeing the man kneel to take aim he called to his son, "If I fall, John, rush in and put him to death somehow." The precaution was, providentially, unnecessary, for the mutineer, seeing the remaining officers join in this resolute advance, turned his musket on himself. He is not expected to live. Adjutant Baugh, a most promising young officer, is, we regret to say, dangerously wounded.'"

"Treacherous black devils! I'd shoot 'em down like dogs--the lot of them," said Major Erlton savagely. He had slipped from his horse and now stood in the veranda overlooking the proof, his back to Jim Douglas. Perhaps it was the closer sight of his enemy's face which roused the latter's temper. Anyhow he broke into the conversation with that nameless challenge in his voice which makes a third person nervous.

"It is a pity you were not at Barrackpore. They seem to have been in need of a good pot-shot--even of an officer to be potted at--till Hearsey came to the front."

Captain Morecombe turned quickly to put up his sword as it were. "By the way, Erlton," he said hastily, "I don't think you know Douglas, though you tried to see him at Nujjufghur after he saved Mrs. Gissing from that snake."

But Jim Douglas' temper grew, partly at his own fatuity in risking the now inevitable encounter; and he had a vile, uncontrollable temper when he was in the wrong.

"Major Erlton and I have met before," he interrupted, turning to go; "but I doubt if he will recognize me. Possibly his horse may."

He paused as he spoke before the Arab which stood waiting. It whinnied instantly, stretching its head toward its old master. Major Erlton muttered a startled exclamation, but regained his self-possession instantly. "I beg your pardon--Mr.--er--Douglas, I think you said, Morecombe; but I did not recognize you."

The pause was aggressive to the last degree.

"Under that name, you mean," finished Jim Douglas, white with anger at being so obviously at a disadvantage. "The fact is, Captain Morecombe, that as the late King of Oude's trainer I called myself James Greyman. I sold that Arab to Major Erlton under that name, and under--well--rather peculiar circumstances. I am quite ready to tell them if Major Erlton thinks them likely to interest the general public."

His eyes met his enemy's, fiercely getting back now full measure of sheer, wild, vicious temper. Everything else had gone to the winds, and they would have been at each other's throats gladly; scarcely remembering the cause of quarrel, and forgetting it utterly with the first grip, as men will do to the end of time.

Then the Major, being less secure of his ground since fighting was out of the question, turned on his heel. "So far as I'm concerned," he said, "the explanation is sufficient. Give the devil his due and every man his chance."

The innuendo was again unmistakable; but the words reminded Jim Douglas of an almost-forgotten promise, and he bit his lips over the necessity for silence. But in that--as he knew well--lay his only refuge from his own temper; it was silence, or speech to the uttermost.

"If you have quite done with the proof, Captain Morecombe," he said very ceremoniously.

"Certainly, certainly. Thanks for letting me see it," interrupted the Captain, who had been looking from one to the other doubtfully, as most men do even when their dearest friends are implicated, if the cause of a quarrel is a horse. "It is a serious business," he went on hurriedly to help the diversion. "After all the talk and fuss, this cutting down of an officer----"

"Is first blood," put in Jim Douglas. "There will be more spilled before long."

"Disloyal scoundrels!" growled Major Erlton wrathfully. "Idiots! As if they had a chance!"

"They have none. That's the pity of it," retorted his adversary as he rode off quickly.

Ay! that was the pity of it! The pity of blood to be spilled needlessly. The thought made him slacken speed, as if he were on the threshold of a graveyard; though he could not foresee the blood to be spilled so wantonly in that very garden-set angle of the city, so full now of the scent of flowers, the sounds of security. From far came the subdued hum which rises from a city in which there is no wheeled traffic, no roar of machinery; only the feet of men, their tears, their laughter, to assail the irresponsive air. Nearer, among the scattered houses hidden by trees, rose children's voices playing about the servants' quarters. Across the now empty playground of the College the outlines of the church showed faintly among the fret of branches upon the dull red sky, which a cloudless sunset leaves behind it. And through the open arch of the Cashmere gate, the great globe of the full moon grew slowly from the ruddy earth-haze, then loud and clear came the chime of seven from the mainguard gong, the rattle of arms dying into silence again. The peace of it all seemed unassailable, the security unending.

"Delhi dur ust!"