Captain Barlow was sent—­ostensibly as an assistant to the Resident, in reality to acquire full knowledge of the situation, and then go to the camp of Amir Khan with the delicate mission of persuading him not to join his riding spear-men to the Mahratta force, but to form an alliance with the British.

The Resident had asked for Barlow.  He had explained that any show of interest, two men, or five, or twenty, an envoy, even men of pronounced position, would defeat their object; in fact, believing Nana Sahib to be what he was, he conceived the very simple idea of playing the Oriental’s Orientalism against him.

Barlow would be the last man in India to whom one as suspicious as the Peshwa’s son would attribute a subtlety deep enough for a serious mission.  He was a great handsome boy; in his physical excellence he was beautiful; courage was manifest in the strong content of his deep brown eyes.  Incidentally that was one of the reasons the Resident had asked for him, though he would have denied it, even to his daughter, Elizabeth, though it was for her sake—­that part of it.

The affair with Elizabeth had been going on for two or three years; never quite settled—­always hovering.

Indeed the Resident’s daughter was not constituted to raise a cyclone of passion, a tempest of feeling that brings an impetuous declaration of love from any man.  She was altogether proper; well-bred; admirable; perhaps somewhat of the type so opposite to Barlow’s impressionable nature that ultimately, all in good time, they would realise that the scheme of creation had marked them for each other.  And Colonel Hodson almost prayed for this.  It was desirable in every way.  Barlow was of a splendid family; some day he might become Lord Barradean.

Anyway Captain Barlow was there playing polo with Nana Sahib—­one of the Prince’s favourites; and waiting for a certain paper that would be sent to the Resident that would contain offers of an alliance with the Pindari Chief.

And this same hovering menace of the Pindari force was causing Nana Sahib unrest.  Perhaps there had been a leak, as cautiously as the Resident had made every move.  If the Pindari army were to join the British, ready at a moment’s notice to fall on the flank of the Mahrattas, harass them with guerilla warfare, it would be serious; they were as elusive as a huge pack of wolves; unencumbered by camp followers, artillery, foraging as they went, swooping like birds of prey, they were a terrible enemy.  Even as the tiger slinks in dread from a pack of the red wild-dogs, so a regular force might well dread these flying horsemen.

And it was Amir Khan that Nana Sahib, and the renegade French commander, Jean Baptiste, dreaded and distrusted.  Overtures had been made to him without result.  He was a wonderful leader.  He had made the name of the Pindari feared throughout India.  He was the magnet that held this huge body of fighting devils together.