Close under the wall he waited, all the scout in him alert.  The cautious rustlings drew stealthily nearer; ceased, for a few tantalising seconds; then, out of the massed shadows, there crept a moving shadow.

Roy’s spring was calculated to a nicety; but the thing swerved sharply and fled up the rough hillside.  There followed a ghostly chase, unreal as a nightmare, lit up by the moon’s deceptive brilliance; the earth, an unstable welter of light and darkness, shifting under his feet.

The fleeing shade was agile; and plainly familiar with the ground.  Baulked, and lured steadily farther from Aruna, all the Rajput flamed in Roy.  During those mad moments he was capable of murdering the unknown with his hands....

Suddenly, blessedly, the thing stumbled and dropped to its knees.  With the spring of a panther, he was on it, his angers at its throat, pinning it to earth.  The choking cry moved him not at all:—­and suddenly the moonlight showed him the face of Chandranath, mingled hate and terror in the starting eyes....

Amazed beyond measure, he unconsciously relaxed his grip. “You—­is it?—­you devil!”

There was no answer.  Chandranath had had the wit to wriggle almost clear of him;—­almost, not quite.  Roy’s pounce was worthy of his Rajput ancestors; and next moment they were locked in a silent, purposeful embrace....

But Roy’s brain was cooler now.  Sanity had returned.  He could still have choked the life out of the man, without compunction.  But he did not choose to embroil himself, or his people, on account of anything so contemptible as the creature that was writhing and scratching in his grasp.  He simply wanted to secure him and hand him over to the Jaipur authorities, who had several scores up against him.

But Chandranath, though not skilled, had the ready cunning of the lesser breeds.  With a swift unexpected move, he tripped Roy up so that he nearly fell backward; and, in a supreme effort to keep his balance, unconsciously loosened his hold.  This time, Chandranath slipped free of him; and, in the act, pushed him so violently that he staggered and came down among sharp broken stones with one foot twisted under him.  When he would have sprung up, a stab of pain in his ankle told him he was done for....

The sheer ignominy of it enraged him; and he was still further enraged by the proceedings of the victor, who sprang nimbly out of reach on to a fragment of buttressed wall, whence he let fly a string of abusive epithets nicely calculated to touch up Roy’s pride and temper and goad him to helpless fury.

But if his ankle was crippled, his brain was not.  While Chandranath indulged his pent-up spite, Roy was feeling stealthily, purposefully, in the semi-darkness, for the sharpest chunk of stone he could lay hands on; a chunk warranted to hurt badly, if nothing more.  The strip of shadow against the sky made an admirable target; and Roy’s move, when it came, was swift, his aim unerring.