He was wakened from a revery by Duncan McClean, who raised his daughter tenderly and got up on his feet.

“The dawn will be here soon, Mr. Cunningham.  We had better get ready.  Well—­in case we never meet again—­I’m glad I met you.”

“Better start before the sun gets up,” he answered, gripping the missionary’s hand.  He was a soldier again.  He had had the answer to his thoughts!  If the man who was to sacrifice his daughter—­or risk her sacrifice—­was pleased to have met him, there was not much sense in harboring self-criticism!  He shook it off, and squared his shoulders, beginning again to think of all that lay ahead.

“Trust to the old woman to guide you and show you a place to rest at, if you must rest.  You ought to reach Howrah at dusk tomorrow, for you’ll find it quite impossible to travel fast—­you’re both of you too stiff, for one thing.  Lie up somewhere—­Joanna will know of a place—­until the old woman has taken in a message to Jaimihr, and wait until he sends you some men to escort you through the outskirts of the city.  I’ve got disguises ready for you—­a pugree for you, Mr. McClean, and a purdah for your daughter—­you’ll travel as a Hindoo merchant and his wife.  If you get stopped, say very little, but show this.”

He produced the letter written once by Maharajah Howrah to the Alwa-sahib and sent by galloper with the present of a horse.  It was signed, and at the bottom of it was the huge red royal seal.  “Now go and put the disguise on, while I see to the horses; I’m going to pick out quiet ones, if possible, though I warn you they’re rare in these parts.”

Some twenty minutes later he led their horses for them gingerly down the slippery rock gorge, and waited at the bottom while six men wound the gate up slowly.  Rosemary McClean was quite unrecognizable, draped from head to foot in a travelling veil that might have been Mohammedan or Hindoo, and gave no outward sign as to her caste, or rank.  McClean, in the full attire of a fairly prosperous Hindoo, but with no other mark about him to betoken that he might be worth robbing, rode in front of her, high-perched on a native saddle.  In front, on a desert pony, rode Joanna, garbed as a man.

“She ought to be travelling in a carriage of some kind,” admitted Cunningham, “but we haven’t got a single wheeled thing here.  If any one asks pertinent questions on the road, you’d better say that she had an ekka, but that some Rangars took it from you.  D’you think you know the language well enough to pass muster?”

“It’s a little late to ask me that!” laughed McClean.  “Yes—­I’m positive I do.  Good-by.”

They shook hands again and the three rode off, cantering presently, to make the most of the coolness before the sun got up.  Cunningham climbed slowly up the hill and then watched them from the parapet—­ wondering, wondering again—­whether he was justified.  As he put it to himself, it was “the hell of a position for a man to find himself in!” He caught himself wondering whether his thoughts would have been the same, and whether his conscience would have racked him quite as much, had Rosemary McClean been older, and less lovely, and a little more sour-tongued.