n. You are strange people: if I, a
Christian, drink out of one of your vessels, you would say it was
defiled, and break it. But you go and handle that nasty, dirty old man,
and say it is a blessing for him to come."

"Yes, my lord; he is a fakir."

"Very good," I said; "but, I repeat, don't let him come near me."

"He will not, my lord. We could not have it. He might curse my lord,
because he is an unbeliever."

"Well, never mind that," I said. "He knows no better. I trust he was
more frightened than hurt."

"Yes, my lord; but those are ugly wounds."

"Yes," I said. "But what would the rajah say at your having people so
near?"

"His highness may not know. He would be angry if he knew that the fakir
was here. But if he does know--well, it was fate."

"Will he come to-day?"

"Thy servant knoweth not. It would be better that he stayed till the
holy man has gone his way."

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

The rajah did not come that day, nor the next, and it troubled me sadly,
for it made me feel that he thought he was sure of me, and the more I
led that solitary life, and satisfied myself that I was most carefully
watched, the more I dreaded my firmness.

For, in my greatest fits of despondency, I began asking myself why I
should hold out. If the English were driven out of India, who would
know or care anything about me?

But I always came back to the dirty slip of paper with the characters on
that I could not read. They meant hope to me, and friends coming to
help me, and this gave me strength.

The second day after the dirty old fakir came, I went for a walk, for my
horse had not arrived; and, as I expected, the sentries were at hand,
but they did not follow me, and I soon found out the reason. About a
quarter of a mile from my tent, I came upon a fierce-looking man,
sitting like a statue upon his horse, grasping his lance, and, whichever
way I went, there were others.

To test this, I turned in several directions--in amongst the trees, and
out toward the slope leading to the plain; but everywhere there were
these mounted sentries ready to start out quietly from behind some tree,
and change their position so as to be a hundred yards ahead of me
wherever I went; and it was all done so quietly that, to a casual
observer, it would have appeared as if they had nothing whatever to do
with me, but were simply watching the country for advancing foes, an
idea strengthened by the way in which signals we