Both of them saw the watchers, posted at every vantage-point, insolently wakeful; both of them knew that Jaimihr had placed them there.  But neither of them looked one inch deeper than the surface, nor supposed that their presence betokened anything but the prince’s unreachable ambition.  Neither of them thought for an instant that the day could possibly have come when Britain would be unable to protect a woman of its own race, or when a native—­however powerful—­would dare to do more than threaten.

Joanna disappeared, and that led to a chain of thought which was not creditable to any one concerned.  They reasoned this way:  Rosemary had seen Mahommed Gunga hold out a handful of gold coins for the old woman’s eyes to glitter at, therefore it was fair to presume that he had promised her a reward for bringing word to the man whom, it was now known, he had left behind.  She had brought word to him and had disappeared.  What more obvious than to reason that the man had gladly paid her, and had just as gladly ridden off, rejoicing at the thought that he could escape doing service?

“So much,” they argued, “for native constancy!  So much for Mahommed Gunga’s boast that he knew of men who could be trusted!  And so much for Joanna’s gratitude!”

The old woman had been saved by Rosemary McClean from the long-drawn-out hell that is the life portion of most Indian widows, even of low caste; she had had little to do, ever, beyond snooze in the shade and eat, and run sometimes behind the pony—­a task which came as easily to her as did the other less active parts of her employment.  Her desertion, particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary McClean cry, and set her father to quoting Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”

   “Blow, blow, thou winter wind! 
    Thou art not so unkind
    As man’s ingratitude!”

All Scotsmen seem to have a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself.  The Book of Lamentations —­Shakespeare’s sadder lines—­roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation—­as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of the songs of Robbie Burns.

The poor old king of the poet’s imagining, declaiming up above the cliffs of Dover, could have put no more pathos into those immortal lines than did Duncan McClean as he paced up and down between the hot wars of the darkened room.  The dry air parched his throat, and his ambition seemed to shrivel in him as he saw the brave little woman who was all he had sobbing with her head between her hands.

He turned to the Bible, but he could find no precedent in any of its pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or adversity.  He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening his throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the improvised jar filter; but when the oven blast that makes the Indian summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, he had found nothing but admonishment to stand firm.  There had been women, too, whose deeds were worthy of record in that book, and he found no argument for deserting his post on his daughter’s account either.  In the Bible account, as he read it, it had always been the devil who fled when things got too uncomfortable for him, and he was conscious of a tight-lipped, stern contempt for the devil.