“Sahiba—­absolutely!”

“Then let me pass!”

Reluctantly he stood aside.  She slipped out and let the bar down unobserved.  But she had not recovered all her self-possession when she reached the courtyard.

“Evening, Miss McClean,” said Cunningham; and she all but fainted, she was strained to such a pitch of nervousness.

“Where have you come from, Miss McClean?” asked Cunningham.  And she told him.  She was not quite so stiff-chinned as she had been.

“What were you doing there?”

She told him that, too.

“Where is your father?”

“In his chair on the veranda, Mr. Cunningham.  There, in that deep shadow.”

“Come to him, please.  I want your explanation in his presence.”

She followed as obediently as a child.  The sense of guilt—­of fright —­of impending judgment left her as she walked with him, and gave place to a glow of comfort that here should be a man on whom to lean.  She did not fight the new sensation, for she was growing strangely weary of the other one.  By the time that they had reached her father, and he was standing before Cunningham wiping his spectacles in his nervous way, she had completely recovered her self-possession, although it is likely she would not have given any reason for it to herself.

Cunningham held a lantern up, so that he could study both their faces.  His own face muscles were set rigidly, and he questioned them as he might have cross-examined a spy caught in the act.  His voice was uncompromising, and his manner stern.

“Do you both understand how serious this situation is?” he asked.

“We naturally do,” said Duncan McClean.  The Scotsman was beginning to betray an inclination to bridle under the youngster’s attitude, and to show an equally pronounced desire not to appear to.  “More so, probably, than anybody else!”

“Are you positive—­both of you—­you too, Mr. McClean—­that all that talk about treasure in Howrah City is not mere imagination and legend?”

“Absolutely positive!” They both answered him at once, both looking in his eyes across the unsteady rays of the flickering, smoky lamp.  “The amount has been, of course, much exaggerated,” said McClean, “but I have no doubt there is enough there to pay the taxes of all India for a year or two.”

“Then I have another question to ask.  Do you both—­or do you not—­ place yourselves at the service of the Company?  It is likely to be dangerous—­a desperate service.  But the Company needs all that it can muster.”

“Of course we do!” Again both answered in one breath.

“Do you understand that that involves taking my orders?”

This time Duncan McClean did the answering, and now it was he who seized the lamp.  He held it high, and scanned Cunningham’s face as though he were reading a finely drawn map.

“We are prepared—­I speak for my daughter as well as for myself—­to obey any orders that you have a right to give, young man.”