d he thought of nothing else; of nothing
but somehow reaching the garden. Once there he would face the next
difficulty. One was enough at a time. And then, when he had made the
rope fast to one of the marble pillars and slid down it, it proved too
short. He swung with his feet just touching the topmost branch of a
blossoming peach tree. There was nothing for it but to let go, snatch at
the branches as he fell and trust to chance for safety. He found it; and
dropped to the ground amid a perfect shower of shed peach petals.

So he stood for an instant to consider what must come next. A gate! Aye!
but which? The farthest from the point of attack would be the best, as
there would be less vigilance there. That meant the Delhi gate, and
meant also a long round; yet he must be quick, for already there was a
faint lightening of the eastern sky. But the moon had set and the
shadows, always darker in the hour before dawn, lay upon all things.

And luckily he knew every turn of the Bala Hissar garden, knew every
point where danger might be expected. So he began to make his way
carefully. He dodged more than one sentry by creeping on through the
bushes while the man passed away from him, and crouched among them,
still as a mouse, while the measured march came toward him. And once he
had to run for bare life from a shower of arrows which a company of
soldiers sent into the darkness after a suspicious rustling in the
bushes. But mostly the men on duty had too much to think of outside the
walls to trouble themselves much about the things inside them.

So with doublings and turnings he came at last on the Delhi gate, a
small, round, flat-roofed building pierced by a high archway. It was too
dark for him to see its outline, but he knew it well, and paused against
the outside wall to consider what he had to do next. The place seemed
almost deserted, but a glimmer of light from the archway and the even
tramp of a sentry's footstep told it was not all unguarded.

What was he to do? It would be useless for him to try and steal past the
sentry, as the gate beyond must be locked, or at any rate bolted and
barred. He must either, therefore, try and overpower the man or else try
to gain the flat roof by the stairs--of which he knew the position--and,
trusting to find a rope or something of the sort in the upper room of
the gate, let himself down into the ditch outside.

Now, Roy was a well-grown lad of nigh fifteen, tall for his age, and
wi