ments, or else went rolling down the circular causeway
that led to the street below.

Brown seemed to be garnering ideas from watching them. He gazed down
at the noisy tumult of the city, watching for a while the efforts of an
ill-directed crowd to put out a fire that blazed in a distant quarter of
the bazaar.

There seemed to him something strangely preconcerted about much of the
hurrying to and fro below him. It struck him as being far too orderly to
be the mere boiling of a loot-crazed mob.

His prisoners gave the secret to him. They were leaning against the
parapet on the other side--the side closest to the city-wall, and
farthest from the top of the causeway--and they were chattering together
excitedly in undertones. Brown walked round to where they stood, and
stared where they stared. Just as they had done, he recognized what lay
below him.

It was faintly outlined in the blackness, picked out here and there by
lanterns, and still too far away for most civilians to name it until
the sun rose and showed its detail. But Brown, the soldier, knew on the
instant, and so did his men.

Suddenly and unexpectedly and sweetly, like a voice in the night that
spoke of hope and strength and the rebirth of order out of chaos, a
bugle gave tongue from where the lanterns swung in straight-kept lines.

"Oh, Juggut Khan! Oh, Juggut Khan!"

Bill Brown's voice boomed through the opening in the dome, and spread
down the walls of the powder-magazine as though in the inside of a
speaking-trumpet.

"Brown sahib?"

"The army has got here from the north! It has come down here from
Harumpore! It's outside the walls now, lying on its arms, and evidently
waiting to attack at daylight!"

"I, too, have news, Brown sahib! All four are living! All four lie here
on the floor of the magazine, and they recover rapidly. They are all but
strong enough to stand."

"Good! Then come up here, Juggut Khan!"

That winding pathway up the inside of the dome took longer to negotiate
than an ordinary stairway would have done, but presently the Rajput
leaned against the parapet and panted beside Brown.

"D'you see them? There they are! Now, look on this side! D'you see the
preparations going on? D'you realize what the next thing's going to be?
They'll come for powder for the guns, so's to have it all ready for the
gun-crews when the fun begins at dawn! Listen! Here they are already!"

A thundering had started on the great teak door below--a thu