but why should the Nana
Sahib write the truth? The Great Lord Sahib, the Viceroy, had sent
no soldiers to compel him. Nevertheless, Tooni packed what there
was to pack, and soothed the baby with a little goat's milk and
water, and dressed her mistress as well as she was able, according
to the doctor's directions. Then she went out to where old Abdul,
the table-waiter, her husband, crouched under a wall, and told him
all that she knew and feared. But Abdul, having heard no guns for
nearly an hour and a half, was inclined to be very brave, and said
that without doubt they should all get safely to Allahabad; and
there, when the memsahib was better, they would find the captain-sahib
again, and he would give them many rupees backsheesh for
being faithful to her.

'The memsahib will never be better,' said Tooni, sorrowfully; 'her
rice is finished in the earth. The memsahib will die.'

She agreed to go to the ghat, though, and went back into the hut to
wait for the ox-cart while Abdul cooked a meal on the powder-blackened
ground with the last of the millet, and gave thanks to Allah.

There was no room for Tooni to ride when they started. She walked
alongside carrying the baby and its little bundle of clothes.
There was nothing else to carry, and that was fortunate, for the
cart in which the memsahib lay was too full of sick and wounded to
hold anything more. In Tooni's pocket a little black book swung to
and fro; it was the memsahib's book; and in the beginning of the
firing, before the fever came, Tooni had seen the memsahib reading
it long and often. They had not been killed in consequence, Tooni
thought; there must be a protecting charm in the little black book;
so she slipped it into her pocket. They left the looking-glass
behind.

The ox-cart passed out creaking, in its turn, beyond the earthworks
of the English encampment into the city, where the mutinous natives
stood in sullen curious groups to watch the train go by. A hundred
yards through the narrow streets, choked with the smell of
gunpowder and populous with vultures, and Abdul heard a quick voice
in his ear. When he turned, none were speaking, but he recognised
in the crowd the lowering indifferent face of a sepoy he knew--one
of the Nana Sahib's servants. Saying nothing, he fell back for
Tooni and laid his hand upon her arm. And when the cart creaked
out of the town into the crowded, dusty road that led down to the
ghat, neither Abdul nor Tooni