ng attentively.

I could not help noticing how nervous and troubled the doctor seemed,
performing his task with trembling hands, as if in great awe of the
chief his master. He ended by rising and salaaming again.

"Well?" said the rajah quickly; and I knew enough Hindustani now to be
able to snatch at the meaning of their words. "You must make him well
quickly."

"I will try, your highness."

"No, sir; you will do," said the rajah, sternly.

"He must be made strong and well soon. I want him; he is my friend."

He turned from the doctor, who took this as his dismissal, and bowed and
left the tent, while the rajah seated himself on the carpet by his
sword, and stayed there in one position as if deep in thought, making
probably more plans.

I lay watching him wonderingly, asking myself whether he had ever
grasped the fact of how much I had had to do with the recovery of the
guns, and if he did not, what would be his feelings toward one who had
utterly baulked him, and robbed him of the prize he went through so much
to win.

I certainly did not feel disposed to enlighten him, but by watching his
troubled face, and thinking of how valuable, if he had succeeded in well
training his men, a troop of horse artillery would be, and how different
our position would have been during that encounter if he had had half a
dozen six-pounders well-served.

"But he has no guns," I ended by saying to myself; "and we--I mean our
people--have, and I cannot believe in our--I mean their--being swept
away, so long as they hold such a supremacy as the guns afford to them."

I was stopped short by the rajah re-buckling his sword-belt, and a
minute later he was bending over me.

"Make haste," he said in Hindustani. "I shall not be at peace till you
are well once more."

He pressed my hand warmly, and bade me order anything I wished, for I
was in my own tent, and then, after smiling at me, and telling me to
grow strong, he strode to the purdah, drew it aside, turned to look
back, and then the curtain fell between us, and I was alone once more.

I lay listening to the stamping and plunging of horses, and in
imagination could picture the whole scene with the restless, excitable
animals, shrinking from being backed, and pretending to bite, but
calming down the moment they felt a strong hand at the bit.

Then came an order, followed by the jingling of weapons and the snorting
of the horses and their heavy trampling upon the soft ear