ces!"

He turned to Suliman. "Is she awake yet?" he demanded.

"Barely, but she recovers."

"Then tell her, when consciousness returns, that I have gone and will
return for her. And stay here, thou, and guard her until I come."

"Ha, sahib!"

"Now, show the way!"

"But--" said the priest, "our bargain? The price that we agreed on--one
lakh, was it not?"

"One lakh of devils take thee and tear thee into little pieces! Wouldst
bribe a Rajput, a Risaldar? For that insult I will repay thee one day
with interest, O priest! Now, show the way!"

"But how shall I be sure about my son?"

"Be sure that the priestling will starve to death or die of thirst or
choke, unless I hurry! He is none too easy where he lies!"

"Go! Hurry, then!" swore the priest. "May all the gods there are, and
thy Allah with them, afflict thee with all their curses--thee and thine!
Up with you! Up that ladder! Run! But, if the gods will, I will meet
thee again when the storm is over!"

"Inshallah!" growled Mahommed Khan.

Ten minutes later a crash and a clatter and a shower of sparks broke out
in the sweltering courtyard where the guns had stood and waited. It was
Shaitan, young Bellairs' Khaubuli charger, with his haunches under him,
plunging across the flagstones, through the black-dark archway, out
on the plain beyond--in answer to the long, sharp-roweled spurs of the
Risaldar Mahommed Khan.

X.

Dawn broke and the roofs of old Hanadra became resplendent with the
varied colors of turbans and pugrees and shawls. As though the rising
sun had loosed the spell, a myriad tongues, of women chiefly, rose in
a babel of clamor, and the few men who had been left in. Hanadra by
the night's armed exodus came all together and growled prophetically in
undertones. Now was the day of days, when that part of India, at least,
should cast off the English yoke.

To the temple! The cry went up before the sun was fifteen minutes high.
There are a hundred temples in Hanadra, age-old all of them and carved
on the outside with strange images of heathen gods in high relief, like
molds turned inside out. But there is but one temple that that cry could
mean--Kharvani's; and there could be but one meaning for the cry. Man,
woman and child would pray Kharvani, Bride of Siva the Destroyer, to
intercede with Siva and cause him to rise and smite the English. On the
skyline, glinting like flashed signals in the early sun, bright English
bayonets had appeared;