down like a jagged saw from utter blackness. Less than a minute
later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof; before another five had
passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the outer road and
was running like a black ghost--head down--an end of her loin-cloth
between her teeth--one arm held tight to her side and the other crooked
outward, swinging--striding, panting, boring through the blackness.

She wasted little time at the caravansary. The gate was shut and a
sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.

"Horses? Belonging to a Rangar? Fool! Does not the Maharajah-sahib
impound all horses left ownerless? Ask them back of him that took them!
Go, night-owl! Go ask him!"

Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance, she
dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house. She
was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion. There were
watchers--two sets of them. One man stood, with his back turned within
ten paces of her, and another--less than two yards away from him--stood,
turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling to himself.
There was not a corner or an angle of the little place that was not
guarded.

She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had
rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the missionary
and his daughter occupied the front room always and that they would not
have heard her had she hammered. She tapped now, very gently, with her
fingers on the lower panel of the door, quaking and trembling in every
limb, but taking care to make her little noise unevenly, in a way
that would be certain to attract attention inside. Tap-tap-tap. Pause.
Tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap. The door opened
suddenly. Both watchers turned and gazed straight into the lamplight
that streamed out past the tall form of Duncan McClean. He stared at
them and they stared back again. Joanna slunk into the deep shadow at
one side of the steps.

"Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as by
spying on me?" asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.

The guards laughed and turned their backs with added insolence. In that
second Joanna shot like a black spirit of the night straight past the
missionary's legs and collapsed in a bundle on the floor behind him.

"Shut the door, sahib!" she hissed at him. "Quick! Shut the door!"

He shut it and bolted it, half r