A party of villagers hurried by, shifting their cheap turbans to hide faces as they scurried along.

The Gulab was trembling; perhaps the decoits, led by Hunsa, had come by a shorter way; for they were like beasts of the jungle in this art of silent, swift travel.

“Sahib,” she pleaded, “go from the road.”

“Why, Bootea?”

“The one with the staff spoke of soldiers.”

He laughed and patted her shoulder.  “Don’t fear, little lady,” he said, “an army doesn’t make war upon one, even if they are soldiers.  It will be but a wedding party who now take the wife to the village of her husband.”

“Not at night; and a Sahib who carries a woman upon his saddle will hear words of offence.”

Though Barlow laughed he was troubled.  What if the smouldering fire of sedition had flared up, and that even now men of Sindhia’s were slipping on a night march toward some massing of rebels.  The resonant, heavy moaning of massive wheels was like the rumble of a gun carriage.  And, too, there was the drumming of many hoofs upon the road.  Barlow’s ear told him it was the rhythmic beat of cavalry horses, not the erratic rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of native ponies.

With a pressure upon the rein he edged the grey from the white road to a fringe of bamboo and date palms, saying; “If you will wait here, Gulab, I’ll see what this is all about.”

He slipped from the saddle and lifted her gently to the ground saying, “Don’t move; of a certainty it is nothing but the passing of some raja.  But, if by any chance I don’t return, wait until all is still, until all have gone, and then some well-disposed driver of a bullock cart will take you on your way.”  Putting his hand in his pocket, and drawing it forth, he added:  “Here is the compeller of friendship—­silver; for a bribe even an enemy will become a friend.”

But the Gulab with her slim fingers closed his hand over the rupees, and pressed the back of it against her lips saying, “If I die it is nothing.  But stay here, Sahib, they may be—­”

She stopped, and he asked, “May be who, Gulab?”

“Men who will harm thee.”

But Barlow lifting to the saddle passed to the road, and Bootea crumpled down in a little desolate heap of misery, her fingers thrust within her bodice, pleading with an amulet for protection for the Sahib.  She prayed to her own village god to breathe mercy into the hearts of those who marched in war, and if it were the Bagrees, that Bhowanee would vouchsafe them an omen that to harm the one on a white horse would bring her wrath upon their families and their villages.