and it was found that the men could not be
served with three rounds apiece out of them. When this was
announced, nobody thought of doubting the wisdom of the Maharajah's
decision to shut up the gates of the city, and trust to the
improbability of the English venturing to attack him in such small
numbers, not knowing his resources. So that very night, lest any
word should go abroad of the strait of the warriors of Chita, the
gates were shut. But all the city knew. Moti knew. Sunni knew.

Two days later, Moti and Sunni heard the English bugles half a mile
away. They were playing 'Weel may the keel row!' the regimental
march-past, as Colonel Starr's Midlanders did the last half mile to
their camping-ground. The boys were in the courtyard among the
horses, and Sunni dropped the new silver bit he was looking at,
held up his head, and listened. He was the same yellow-haired,
blue-eyed Sunni, considerably tanned by the fierce winds of
Rajputana; but there came a brightness over his face as he
listened, that had not been there since he was a very little boy.

'How beautiful the music is!' said he to Moti.

Moti put his fingers in his ears.

'It is horrible,' he cried. 'It screams and it rushes. How can
they be able to make it? I shall tell my father to have it
stopped.'

Presently the bugles stopped of themselves, and Moti forgot about
them, but the brightness did not go out of Sunni's face, and all
day long he went about humming the air of 'Weel may the keel row,'
with such variations as might be expected. He grew very thoughtful
toward evening, but his eyes shone brighter than any sapphires in
the Maharajah's iron boxes. As to an old Mahomedan woman from
Rubbulgurh, who cooked her chupatties alone and somewhat despised,
she heard the march-past too, and was troubled all day long with
the foolish idea that the captain-sahib would presently come in to
tea, and would ask her, Tooni, where the memsahib was.

CHAPTER IX

Sunni had his own room in the palace, a little square place with a
high white wall and a table and chair in it, which Dr. Roberts had
given him. The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper.
There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked
box. There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a
passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on.
So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little
chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into hi