ree and fall. But he hung where he was and spun, and it was five
minutes before Rosemary remembered that his weapons had all been taken
from him! It was scarcely likely that he could bite the thick rope
through with his teeth!

She stood then for two or three more minutes wondering what to do,
for she had no knife of her own, and she had made the rope
fast--woman-wise--with a true landlubber's knot that tightened from the
strain until her struggling fingers could not make the least impression
on it. But Alwa walked up openly--drew his heavy sabre--and saved the
situation for her.

"That may help to jog his recollection of the bargain!" he laughed,
severing the rope with a swinging cut and peering over to see, if he
could, how Jaimihr landed. By a miracle the Prince landed on his feet.
He sat down for a moment to recover from the shock, and then walked off
awkwardly to where his cavalry were sleeping by their horses.

He had some trouble in persuading the outposts who he really was, and
there was an argument that could be quite distinctly heard from the
summit of the rock, and made Alwa roar with laughter before, finally,
the whole contingent formed and wheeled and moved away, ambling toward
Howrah City at a pace that betokened no unwillingness.

Five minutes later the Sikh's horse thundered out across the plain from
under Alwa's iron gate, and the news, such as it was, was on its way to
Byng-bahadur.

"A clear road at the price of a horse-hide rope!" laughed Alwa. "Now for
some real man's work!"

Rosemary stole off to argue with her father and her conscience, but Alwa
went to his troopers' quarters and told off ten good men for the task
of manning the fortress in his absence. They were ten unwilling men; it
needed all his gruff authority, and now and then a threat, to make them
stay behind.

"I must leave ten men behind," he insisted. "It takes four men, even at
a pinch, to lift the gate. And who shall guard my women? Nay, I should
leave twenty, and I must leave ten. Therefore I leave the ten best men I
have, and they who stay behind may know by that that I consider them the
best!"

The remainder of his troopers he sent out one by one in different
directions, with orders to rally every Rangar they could find, and at
a certain point he named. Then he and Mahommed Gunga said good-by to
Cunningham and took a trail that led in the direction where
most of the doubtfuls lived--the men who might need personal
convin