hey kept
on. Had the noise gradually died out, I should have been hopeful, for I
should have thought that they were leaving the place because the English
were advancing. But though I sat at the window and strained my ears,
there was no distant sound of firing, and I was getting into a very
despairing mood, when my spirits revived again just before sunset, for
all at once there was the sound of a gun; faint, distant, but
unmistakably the report of a field-piece; and as I held my breath and
listened, there was another and then another.

I knew the sound at once as coming from a troop of horse artillery, for
the firing was regular; and I was so sanguine that I immediately set it
down to Brace's troop.

"Oh, if I could only escape!" I thought; and my ideas went at once to
the disguise and the hangings to be used as a rope. If I could only get
down into the court, I trusted to my good fortune to find a way through
some other window, and thence to an unwatched opening.

How to manage it? I was so conspicuous a figure in the uniform I wore
that I felt that I dared not go like that, while to obtain the dress of
one of the servants was impossible.

"I shall have to escape as I am," I thought, and I went down into the
sleeping-room, and laid the sword ready. It was the magnificent tulwar
the rajah had given me, and as I looked at the flashing jewels upon the
hilt, I felt some compunction in taking it; but making up my mind to
return it after I had escaped, feeling, as I did, the necessity for
possessing a weapon, I laid it behind a purdah, where I could quickly
catch it up.

The next thing was to select one of the silken curtains, which I could
divide longwise, and tie the ends together. They would be quite enough
to enable me to reach the ground; and there was a ring on one side of
the window strong enough to bear my weight, I felt.

It was nearly dark by the time I had made those plans, which were
interrupted by pauses, to listen to the distant firing away toward where
the sun set. That was to be my direction, if I could get out of the
town, and I was calculating my chances of escape when a happy thought
struck me--to drape myself in a light curtain, and loosen the pugaree
about my helmet.

But the next minute I felt that there was no need, for my uniform would
be sufficient to command respect among the rajah's troops, if I backed
it up with plenty of coolness and decision. The people, as a rule, knew
that I w