into the
darkness outside.

Then he stopped short and went back. 'Great thanks to you, Tooni-ji,'
he said softly into the darkness of the hut. 'When I find my
own country I will come back and take you there too. And while I
am gone Moti will love you, Tooni-ji. Peace be to you!'

Mar Singh was still awake when Sunni re-entered the palace. The
wind had come, he said. Sleep would rest upon the eyelids of
Sunni-ji in the south balcony.

It was a curious little place, the south balcony, really not a
balcony at all, but a round-pillared pavilion with a roof that
jutted out above the city wall. It hung over a garden too, rather
a cramped garden, the wall and the river came so close, and one
that had been left a good deal to take care of itself. Some fine
pipal-trees grew in it though, one of them towered within three
feet of the balcony, while the lower branches overspread the city
wall. All day long the green parrakeets flashed in and out of the
pipal-trees, screaming and chattering, while the river wound blue
among the yellow sands outside the wall; but to-night the only
sound in them was the whispering of the leaves as the south wind
passed, and both the river and the sands lay silver gray in the
starlight. Sunni, lying full length upon the balcony, listened
with all his might. From the courtyard, away round to the right
where the stables were, came a pony's neigh, and Sunni, as he heard
it once--twice--thrice--felt his eyes fill with tears. It was the
voice of his pony, of his 'Dhooplal,' his 'red sunlight,' and, he
would never ride Dhooplal again. The south breeze brought no other
sound, the palace stretched on either side of him dark and still, a
sweet heavy fragrance from a frangipanni-tree in the garden floated
up, and that was all. Sunni looked across the river, and saw that
a group of palms on the other side was beginning to stand
distinctly against the sky. Then he remembered that he must make
haste.

The first thing he did was to unwind his long turban from his neck,
and cut it in two. Two-thirds he twisted round his waist, the
other he made fast to one of the little red stone pillars of the
balcony. It hung straight and black down into the shadows of the
pipal-tree. Then, very gradually and cautiously, Sunni slipped
over the balcony's edge and let himself down, down, till he reached
a branch thick enough to cling to. The turban was none too long,
the branches at the top were so slender.