elf: "Be a man, Isaac; if she likes him better, hasn't
she a right to her pick?" But still I felt very miserable as I turned
to go away, when a something, said a little louder than the rest,
stopped me.

"That ain't English," I says to myself. "What! surely she's not
listening to that black scoundrel?"

I was red-hot then in a moment; and as to thinking whether this or that
was straightforward, or whether I was playing the spy, or anything of
that sort, such an idea never came into my head. Chunder was evidently
talking to Lizzy Green in that room; and for a few seconds I felt blind
with a sort of jealous savage rage--against her, mind, now; and going on
tip-toe, I looked round the doorway, so as to see as well as hear.

I was back in an instant with a fresh set of sensations busy in my
breast. It was Chunder, but he was alone; there was no Lizzy there; and
I don't know whether my heart beat then for joy at knowing it, or for
shame at myself for having thought such a thing of her.

What did it mean, then?

I did not have to ask myself the question twice, for the answer came--
Treachery! And stealing to the slit of window in the room I was in, I
peeped cautiously out in time to see Chunder throwing out what looked
like a white packet. I could see his arm move as he threw it down to a
man in a turban--a dark wiry-looking rascal; and in those few seconds I
seemed to read that packet word for word, though no doubt the writing
was in one of the native dialects, and my reading of it was, that it was
a correct list of the defenders of the place, the women and children,
and what arms and ammunition there were stored up.

It was all plain enough, and the villain was sending it by a man who
must have brought him tidings of some kind.

What was I to do? That man ought to be stopped at all hazards; and what
I ought to have done was to steal back, give the alarm, and let a party
go round to try and cut him off.

That's what I ought to have done; but I never did have much judgment.

Now for what I did do.

Slipping back from the window, I went cautiously to the doorway, and
entered the old room where Chunder was standing at the window; and I
went in so quietly, and he was so intent, that I had crept close, and
was in the act of leaping on to him before he turned round and tried to
avoid me.

He was too late, though, for with a bound I was on him, pinioning his
hands, and holding him down on the window-sill, with h