om his sitting position and moving towards his horse.
This suited the views of the whole party. The greater number were
already in the saddle. While Arthur and the two others had their feet in
the stirrup, preparing to mount, the whole party were startled and
amazed by the very novel and unlooked for apparition of a female figure,
flying towards them, evidently in great terror and alarm. On reaching
Carlton, who was the nearest to her, she bent forward with supplicating
looks and clasped hands, passionately exclaiming, "Oh! for pity sake,
hasten to the rescue, ere it be too late. Fly! gentlemen, and stay the
bloody work of those miscreants, those fiends in human form. Oh! waste
not a moment, or your aid may come too late." The supplicant was a
handsome three-quarter cast. Her luxuriant hair, dark as a raven's wing,
hung in wild confusion about her neck and shoulders. Her well-fitting
dress, of fine Madras muslin, hung in shreds around her finely moulded
form, and blood was issuing from rents in her light kid slippers,
caused, doubtless, by the thorns and other prickly obstacles she had met
with on her passage through the tangled brushwood of the jungle.

"Pray, calm yourself, I beg, and endeavour to collect your thoughts. To
whom do you allude, and in what direction; do you wish us to go?" said
Dorville, as he handed her some sherry and water from his flask; this
she drank eagerly, then hurriedly continued--the whole group pressing
nearer and nearer to the excited woman, to learn by what mischance or
accident she had been thrown amongst them at such a time and place, so
suddenly--"The Collector of Runjetpoora, his wife, daughter, and
sister, with his four clerks, their wives and children, have been
attacked and captured by a band of twenty mounted mutineers, who have
sworn to massacre them, and some of the children have already been
cruelly butchered by these remorseless villains; I, alone, escaped, and
sought shelter in the jungle, where, from an opening down the ravine,
caught a glimpse of your party, and have struggled through brake and
briar to implore your assistance. Oh! do not lose a moment, if you would
be in time. Even now it may be too late to save them;" and, weeping
wildly, sank on her knees, convulsive sobs choking her further
utterance.

There was now no need to urge them on, for they at once realized the
horrors of the position in which the Collector and his party were now
placed. Exclamations of anger,