The shadows swallowed her again.  She crept where they were darkest—­ lay still once, breathless, while a man walked almost over her—­ reached the outer wall, and felt her way along it until she reached low eaves that reached down like a jagged saw from utter blackness.  Less than a minute later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof; before another five had passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the outer road and was running like a black ghost—­head down—­an end of her loin-cloth between her teeth—­one arm held tight to her side and the other crooked outward, swinging—­striding, panting, boring through the blackness.

She wasted little time at the caravansary.  The gate was shut and a sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.

“Horses?  Belonging to a Rangar?  Fool!  Does not the Maharajah-sahib impound all horses left ownerless?  Ask them back of him that took them!  Go, night-owl!  Go ask him!”

Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance, she dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house.  She was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion.  There were watchers—­two sets of them.  One man stood, with his back turned within ten paces of her, and another—­less than two yards away from him—­stood, turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling to himself.  There was not a corner or an angle of the little place that was not guarded.

She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the missionary and his daughter occupied the front room always and that they would not have heard her had she hammered.  She tapped now, very gently, with her fingers on the lower panel of the door, quaking and trembling in every limb, but taking care to make her little noise unevenly, in a way that would be certain to attract attention inside.  Tap-tap-tap.  Pause.  Tap-tap.  Pause.  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.  Pause.  Tap-tap.  The door opened suddenly.  Both watchers turned and gazed straight into the lamplight that streamed out past the tall form of Duncan McClean.  He stared at them and they stared back again.  Joanna slunk into the deep shadow at one side of the steps.

“Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as by spying on me?” asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.

The guards laughed and turned their backs with added insolence.  In that second Joanna shot like a black spirit of the night straight past the missionary’s legs and collapsed in a bundle on the floor behind him.

“Shut the door, sahib!” she hissed at him.  “Quick!  Shut the door!”

He shut it and bolted it, half recognizing something in the voice or else guided by instinct.

“Joanna!” he exclaimed, holding up a lamp above her.  “You, Joanna!”

At the name, Rosemary McClean came running out—­looked for an instant —­and then knelt by the old woman.