"The woman is
nothing to me--the padre-sahib less. It is because of the debt I owe to
Cunnigan that I ask this favor."

"Oh. It is granted! Should she appeal to me, I will rip Howrah into
rags and burn this city to protect her if need be! She must first ask,
though, even as thou didst."

Mahommed Gunga saluted him, bolt-upright as a lance, and without the
slightest change in his expression.

"The word is sufficient, cousin!"

Alwa returned his salute, and raised his voice in a gruff command. A
saice outside the window woke as though struck by a stick--sprang to his
feet--and passed the order on. A dozen horses clattered in the courtyard
and filed through the arched passage to the street, and Alwa mounted.
The others, each with his escort, followed suit, and a moment later,
with no further notice of one another, but with as much pomp and noise
as though they owned the whole of India, the five rode off, each on his
separate way, through the scattering crowd.

Then Mahommed Gunga called for his own horse and the lone armed man of
his own race who acted squire to him.

"Did any overhear our talk?" he asked.

"No, sahib."

"Not the saice, even?"

"No, sahib. He slept."

"He awoke most suddenly, and at not much noise."

"For that reason I know he slept, sahib. Had he been pretending, he
would have wakened slowly."

"Thou art no idiot!" said Mahommed Gunga. "Wait here until I return, and
lie a few lies if any ask thee why we six came together, and of what we
spoke!"

Then he mounted and rode off slowly, picking his way through the throng
much more cautiously and considerately than his relatives had done,
though not, apparently, because he loved the crowd. He used some
singularly biting insults to help clear the way, and frowned as though
every other man he looked at were either an assassin or--what a good
Mohammedan considers worse--an infidel. He reached the long brick wall
at last--broke into a canter--scattered the pariah dogs that were nosing
and quarreling about the corpse of the Maharati, and drew rein fifteen
minutes later by the door of the tiny school place that Miss McClean had
entered.

CHAPTER III

For service truly rendered, and for duty dumbly done--For men who
neither tremble nor forget--There is due reward, my henchman. There is
honor to be won. There is watch and ward and sterner duty yet.

No sound came, from within the schoolhouse. The little building, coaxed
from a grudging Ma