It was then that they missed Joanna and began to search for her.  But no Joanna came.  It was then that Rosemary McClean rehearsed with her father her former conversation with Mahommed Gunga and part, at least, of her recent one with Ali Partab, and the missionary started off himself to find the horseman whom Mahommed Gunga had so thoughtfully left behind.

But he very naturally found no Ali Partab.  What he did discover was that he was followed—­that a guard, unarmed but obvious, was placed around the mission house—­that his servants deserted one by one—­ that no more children came to the mission school.

He decided to take chances and ride off with his daughter in the night.  But the ponies went mysteriously lame, and nobody would lend or sell him horses on any terms at all.  He did his best to get a letter through to anywhere where there were British, but nobody would take it.  And then Jaimihr came, swaggering with his escort, to offer him and his daughter the hospitality of his palace.

He declined that offer a little testily, for the insolence behind the offer was less than half concealed.  Jaimihr sneered as he rode away.

“Perhaps a month or two of undisturbed enjoyment will induce the padre-sahib to change his mind about my invitation!” he said nastily.  And he made no secret then, as he ordered them about before he went, that the men who lounged and watched at every vantage-point were his.

CHAPTER X

They looked into my eyes and laughed,—­
But, what when I was gone? 
Have strong men made me one of them? 
Or do I ride alone?

On the morning after Mahommed Gunga’s daring experiment with Cunningham’s nervous system he was anxious to say the least of it; and that is only another way of saying that he was irritable.  He watched the Englishman at breakfast, on the dak-bungalow veranda, with a sideways restless glance that gave the lie a dozen times over to his assumed air of irascible authority.

“We will see now what we will see,” he muttered to himself.  “These who know such a lot imagine that the test is made.  They forget that there be many brave men of whom but a few are fit to lead.  Now—­now—­we will see!” And he kept on repeating that assurance to himself, with the air of a man who would like to be assured, but is not, while he ostentatiously found fault with every single thing on which his eyes lit.

“One would think that the Risaldar-sahib were afraid of consequences!” whispered the youngest of his followers, stung to the quick by a quite unmerited rebuke.  “Does he fear that Chota-Cunnigan will beat him?”

White men have been known—­often—­to do stupider things than that, and particularly young white men who have not yet learned to gauge proportions accurately; so there was nothing really ridiculous in the suggestion.  A young white man who has had his temper worked up to the boiling-point, his nerves deliberately racked, and then has been subjected to the visit of a driven tiger, may be confidently expected to exhibit all the faults of which his character is capable.