The night-jars, even the bats, had stilled their wings and slept in the limbs of the neem or the pipal, and the air that had borne the soft perfume of blossoms, and the pungent breath of jasmine, had chilled and grown heavy from the pressure of advancing night.

The two on the grey rode sleepily; the Gulab warm and happy, cuddled in the protecting cloak, and Barlow grim, oppressed by fatigue and the mental strain of feared disaster.  Now the muscles of the horse rippled in heavier toil, and his hoofs beat the earth in shorted stride; the way was rising from the plain as it approached the plateau that was like an immense shelf let into the wall of the world above the lowland; a shelf that held jewels, topaz and diamonds, that glinted their red and yellow lights, and upon which rested giant pearls, the moonlight silvering the domes and minarets of white palaces and mosques of Poona.  The dark hill upon which rested the Temple of Parvati threw its black outline against the sky, and like a burnished helmet glowed the golden dome beneath which sat the alabaster goddess.  At their feet, strung out between forbidding banks of clay and sand, ran a molten stream of silver, the sleepy waters of the Muta.

“By Jove!” and Barlow, suddenly cognisant that he had practically arrived at the end of his ride, that the windmill of Don Quixote stood yonder on the hill, realised that in a sense, so far as Bootea was concerned, he had just drifted.  Now he asked:  “I’m afraid, little girl, your Sahib is somewhat of a fool, for I have not asked where you want me to take you.”

“Yonder, Sahib,” and her eyes were turned toward the jewelled hill.

As they rose to the hilltop that was a slab of rock and sand carrying a city, he asked:  “Where shall I put you down that will be near your place of rest, your friends?”

“Is there a memsahib in the home of the Sahib?” she asked.

“No, Bootea, not so lucky—­nobody but servants.”

“Then I will go to the bungalow of the Sahib.”

“Confusion!” he exclaimed in moral trepidation.

Bootea’s hand touched his arm, and she turned her face inward to hide the hot flush that lay upon it.  “No, Sahib, not because of Bootea; one does not sleep in the lap of a god.”

“All right, girl,” he answered—­“sorry.”

As the grey plodded tiredly down the avenue of trees, a smooth road bordered by a hedge of cactus and lanten, Barlow turned him to the right up a drive of broken stone, and dropping to the ground at the verandah of a white-waited bungalow, lifted the girl down, saying:  “Within it can be arranged for a rest place for you.”

A chowkidar, lean, like a mummified mendicant, rose up from a squeaking, roped charpoy and salaamed.

“Take the horse to the stable, Jungwa, and tell the syce to undress him.  Remember to keep that monkey tongue of yours between your teeth for in my room hangs a bitter whip.  It is a lie that I have not ridden home alone,” Barlow commanded.