yes, Chunda Das, you will devise some way,' protested the barber,
reading the hopelessness in my mind. 'You have a fleet horse, and can
ride after Sheikh Ahmed, find him, and call him back again. Or, if he be
really dead, you can bring word of how his end came.'

"'Will there be time for all this?' I asked dubiously.

"'We must make time,' he answered. 'The patel will be back before long.
You can use the interval in getting some food, and in preparing for the
road. I think your influence with him will at least secure delay for
some days, until you can return with the information in quest of which
you go. But mark my words, unless the Sheikh shows himself, or you can
prove how he met his death on the road, then assuredly will the doom of
our friends be sealed.'

"'Very well,' I said, contented in my mind; for if my search for Sheikh
Ahmed failed, I could bring back with me some of our master Akbar's
soldiery to rescue the prisoners.

"During the afternoon the headman returned, and I lost no time before
interviewing him. I told him how firmly convinced I was that Baji Lal
and Devaka were innocent, and that I would prove it if he gave me the
chance to do so. At first he shook his head, but on my promising that
the unfortunate couple would in the interval make no effort to escape,
and that I would surely be back in two weeks' time whether or not
success in my mission attended me, he yielded to my entreaties, the less
reluctantly because I further undertook to pay him the value of his dead
cows.

"So, after a brief good-bye visit to Baji Lal and his wife, I set forth
on my journey.

"Six days later I entered the bazaar of Punderpur. I went to a
travellers' rest house with which I was familiar, to see whether I could
glean any information as to the present whereabouts of Sheikh Ahmed,
who, in his travels, I had discovered, had been making for this place.

"Seated around the courtyard of the caravanserai were many visitors and
their friends of the town. With some of the latter I was acquainted, but
for the present I only returned their greetings with a silent salaam. I
was anxious to meet with an old friend, a munshi, learned in many
languages, whose profession kept him on the outlook for the numerous
travellers from distant parts who passed this way.

"I had just espied the man of whom I was in quest, seated at some
distance among a group of idlers, when I was accosted by a stranger
handsomely accoutred and of line b