There would be no more shooting, and the Nana Sahib would let them all go away in boats; that was good khaber—­good news.  Tooni wondered, as she put the baby’s clothes together in one bundle, and her own few possessions together in another, whether it was to be believed.  The Nana Sahib so hated the English; had not the guns spoken of his hate these twenty-one days?  Inside the walls many had died, but outside the walls might not all die?  The doctor had said that the Nana Sahib had written it; but why should the Nana Sahib write the truth?  The Great Lord Sahib, the Viceroy, had sent no soldiers to compel him.  Nevertheless, Tooni packed what there was to pack, and soothed the baby with a little goat’s milk and water, and dressed her mistress as well as she was able, according to the doctor’s directions.  Then she went out to where old Abdul, the table-waiter, her husband, crouched under a wall, and told him all that she knew and feared.  But Abdul, having heard no guns for nearly an hour and a half, was inclined to be very brave, and said that without doubt they should all get safely to Allahabad; and there, when the memsahib was better, they would find the captain-sahib again, and he would give them many rupees backsheesh for being faithful to her.

‘The memsahib will never be better,’ said Tooni, sorrowfully; ’her rice is finished in the earth.  The memsahib will die.’

She agreed to go to the ghat, though, and went back into the hut to wait for the ox-cart while Abdul cooked a meal on the powder-blackened ground with the last of the millet, and gave thanks to Allah.

There was no room for Tooni to ride when they started.  She walked alongside carrying the baby and its little bundle of clothes.  There was nothing else to carry, and that was fortunate, for the cart in which the memsahib lay was too full of sick and wounded to hold anything more.  In Tooni’s pocket a little black book swung to and fro; it was the memsahib’s book; and in the beginning of the firing, before the fever came, Tooni had seen the memsahib reading it long and often.  They had not been killed in consequence, Tooni thought; there must be a protecting charm in the little black book; so she slipped it into her pocket.  They left the looking-glass behind.

The ox-cart passed out creaking, in its turn, beyond the earthworks of the English encampment into the city, where the mutinous natives stood in sullen curious groups to watch the train go by.  A hundred yards through the narrow streets, choked with the smell of gunpowder and populous with vultures, and Abdul heard a quick voice in his ear.  When he turned, none were speaking, but he recognised in the crowd the lowering indifferent face of a sepoy he knew—­one of the Nana Sahib’s servants.  Saying nothing, he fell back for Tooni and laid his hand upon her arm.  And when the cart creaked out of the town into the crowded, dusty road that led down to the ghat, neither Abdul nor Tooni were in the riotous crowd that pressed along with it.  They had taken refuge in the outer bazar, and Sonny Sahib, sound asleep and well hidden, had taken refuge with them.