spies had told
him--that Ali Partab was Mahommed Gunga's man. Apparently, then, Ali
Partab--a prisoner in Jaimihr's palace-yard--was the only connecting
link between him and the Rangars whom he wished to win over to his side.
He was as anxious as any to help overwhelm the British, but he naturally
wished to come out of the turmoil high and dry himself, and he was,
therefore, ready to consider the protection of individual British
subjects if that would please the men whom he wanted for his friends.

Mahommed Gunga was known to have carried letters for the missionaries.
He was known to have engaged a new servant when he rode away from Howrah
and to have left his trusted man behind. Miss McClean was known to have
conversed with the retainer, immediately after which the man had been
seized and carried off by Jaimihr's men. Jaimihr was known to have
placed watchers round the mission house and--once--to have killed a man
in Miss McClean's defense. The deduction was not too far-fetched
that the retainer had been left as a protection against Jaimihr, and
consequently that the Rangars, at the behest of Mahommed Gunga, had
decided--on at least the white girl's safety.

Therefore, he argued, if he now proceeded to protect the McCleans, he
would, at all events, not incur the Rangars' enmity.

It was a serious decision that he had to make, for, for one thing, he
dared not yet make any move likely to incite his strongly supported
brother to open rebellion; he dared not, therefore, interfere at
present with the watchers near the mission house. To openly befriend the
Christian priests would be to set the whole Hindoo population against
himself, for it had been mainly against suttee and its kindred horrors
that the missionaries had bent all their energy.

The great palace of Howrah was ahum. Elephants with painted tusks,
and loaded to the groaning-point under howdahs decked with jewels and
gold-leaf, came and went through the carved entrance-gates. Occasionally
camels, loaded too until their legs all but buckled underneath them,
strutted with their weird, mixed air of foolishness and dignity, to be
disburdened of great cases that eight men could scarcely lift; on the
outside the cases were marked "Hardware," but a horde of armed and
waiting malcontents scattered about the countryside could have given a
more detailed and accurate guess at what was in them.

Men came and went--men almost of all castes and many nationalities.
Priests