Then Mahommed Gunga called for his own horse and the lone armed man of his own race who acted squire to him.

“Did any overhear our talk?” he asked.

“No, sahib.”

“Not the saice, even?”

“No, sahib.  He slept.”

“He awoke most suddenly, and at not much noise.”

“For that reason I know he slept, sahib.  Had he been pretending, he would have wakened slowly.”

“Thou art no idiot!” said Mahommed Gunga.  “Wait here until I return, and lie a few lies if any ask thee why we six came together, and of what we spoke!”

Then he mounted and rode off slowly, picking his way through the throng much more cautiously and considerately than his relatives had done, though not, apparently, because he loved the crowd.  He used some singularly biting insults to help clear the way, and frowned as though every other man he looked at were either an assassin or—­what a good Mohammedan considers worse—­an infidel.  He reached the long brick wall at last—­broke into a canter—­scattered the pariah dogs that were nosing and quarreling about the corpse of the Maharati, and drew rein fifteen minutes later by the door of the tiny school place that Miss McClean had entered.

CHAPTER III

For service truly rendered, and for duty dumbly done—­
For men who neither tremble nor forget—­
There is due reward, my henchman.  There is honor to be won. 
There is watch and ward and sterner duty yet.

No sound came, from within the schoolhouse.  The little building, coaxed from a grudging Maharajah, seemed to strain for light and air between two overlapping, high-walled brick warehouses.  Before the door, in a spot where the scorching sun-rays came but fitfully between a mesh of fast-decaying thatch, the old hag who had followed Rosemary McClean lay snoozing, muttering to herself, and blinking every now and then as a street dog blinks at the passers-by.  She took no notice of Mahommed Gunga until he swore at her.

“Miss-sahib hai?” he growled; and the woman jumped up in a hurry and went inside.  A moment later Rosemary McClean stood framed in the doorway still in her cotton riding-habit, very pale—­evidently frightened at the summons—­but strangely, almost ethereally, beautiful.  Her wealth of chestnut hair was loosely coiled above her neck, as though she had been caught in the act of dressing it.  She looked like the wan, wasted spirit of human pity—­he like a great, grim war-god.

“Salaam, Miss Maklin-sahib!”

He dismounted as he spoke and stood at attention, then stared truculently, too inherently chivalrous to deny her civility—­he would have cut his throat as soon as address her from horseback while she stood—­and too contemptuous of her father’s calling to be more civil than he deemed in keeping with his honor.

“Salaam, Mohammed Gunga!” She seemed very much relieved, although doubtful yet.  “Not letters again?”