e pension. He's been a good master to me. We've
grown old together!" sighed the gray-headed soldier.

The frightened Ram Lal Singh was driven around Delhi this eventful day
like a hunted rat. Suddenly summoned to General Willoughby's private
rooms, escorted by a sergeant, who never left him a moment, the old
Mohammedan was ushered into the presence of the two generals, who
pounced upon him and showed him a great, assorted treasure in diamonds,
pearls, pigeon rubies, sapphires, and emeralds of great size and
richness. They were all duly weighed and listed, and duplicate official
invoices lay signed upon the table.

"You were Mirzah Shah's Royal Treasure Keeper? Tell me. Are all his
jewels here? The treasure that disappeared at Humayoon's Tomb before
Hodson slew the princes in the melee?"

Ram Lal saw the frowns of men who had blown better men than himself
from the guns in the old days, and he had a vivid memory of those same
hideous scenes.

"They are about half here in weight and number; about a quarter of the
value. There is a hundred thousand pounds worth missing!" said the
jewel dealer, gazing on the totals of numbers and weights. "The historic
diamonds, the matchless pearls, the never-equaled rubies--all the
choicest have been abstracted, and by a skillful hand!"

"Go, then!" cried Willoughby. "Seal this in your breast! Speak to no one
or you'll die in jail, wearing irons! Here!" A hundred-pound note was
thrust into his hand, and he was whirled away to his shop.

"Ah! The gray devil! he has stolen and hidden the best! I will watch him
like a ghoul of Bowanee, and they shall be mine! He would turn tail
now and steal away!" Ram Lal laughed an oily laugh, and going to an old
cabinet, took out a heavy kreese. "The poisoned dagger of Mirzah Shah!"
he smiled. "After many years!" It was Hugh Johnstone himself who sought
Ram Lal in his pagoda that afternoon, and, after making some heavy
purchases, finally drew out a list of jewels.

"I wish you to certify, Ram Lal," he cautiously said, "that these
are all the jewels of Mirzah Shah, that you handled as 'Keeper of the
Prince's Treasure,' before the Meerut mutineers rushed down upon us."
Slowly peering over the paper, the crafty Ram Lal said:

"You forget, Sahib, that I was sent away to Lucknow and Cawnpore, by
Mirzah Shah, with letters to Nana Sahib and Tantia Topee. I was shut out
of Delhi till after the British were camped on the Windmill Ridge, and
for months I ne