a
last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within, I almost
fell over his recumbent body.

Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open. I kicked the
foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned, the leading dacoit,
his eyes starting from their sockets, his face the face of a demon
leaped wildly through the gateway.

That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce of strength
spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--as a full six inches
of shining steel split the middle panel and protruded above my head.

I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.

A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.

"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand. "My fault. I shouldn't have let you come."

From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long
tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report. And the yellow
face at the window was blotted out.

One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone to his
account.

A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken
window.

Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came the
reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered. In
the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound of bare soles
pattering upon the path outside stole to me. Two runners, I thought
there were, so that four dacoits must have been upon our trail. The
room was full of pungent smoke. I staggered to my feet as the gray
figure with the revolver turned towards me. Something familiar there
was in that long, gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought
so.

It was my gray rain-coat.

"Karamaneh," I whispered.

And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely, which
sounded like "God bless her!"

The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that
quaint, pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.

"I followed you," she said. "Did you not know I should follow you?
But I had to hide because of another who was following also. I had but
just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."

She broke off and turned to Smith.

"This is your pistol," she said naively. "I fo