d-by, Mahommed Khan! Good luck to you! Section, right! Trot,
march!"

With a crash and the clattering of iron shoes on stone the guns jingled
off into the darkness, were swallowed by the gaping archway and rattled
out on the plain.

The Risaldar stood grimly where he was until the last hoof-beat and bump
of gun-wheel had died away into the distance; then he turned and climbed
the winding stairway to the room where the lamp still shone through
gauzy curtains.

On a dozen roof-tops, where men lay still and muttered, brown eyes
followed the movements of the section and teeth that were betel-stained
grinned hideously.

From a nearby temple, tight-packed between a hundred crowded houses,
came a wailing, high-pitched solo sung to Siva--the Destroyer. And as it
died down to a quavering finish it was followed by a ghoulish laugh that
echoed and reechoed off the age-old city-wall.

Proud as a Royal Rajput--and there is nothing else on God's green earth
that is even half as proud--true to his salt, and stout of heart even
if he was trembling at the knees, Mahommed Khan, two-medal man and
Risaldar, knocked twice on the door of Mrs. Lellairs' room, and entered.

And away in the distance rose the red reflection of a fire ten leagues
away. The Mutiny of '57 had blazed out of sullen mystery already, the
sepoys were burning their barracks half-way on the road to Jundhra!

And down below, to the shadow where the Risaldar had stood, crept
a giant of a man who had no military bearing. He listened once, and
sneaked into the deepest black within the doorway and crouched and
waited.

II.

Hanadra reeks of history, blood-soaked and mysterious. Temples piled on
the site of olden temples; palaces where half-forgotten kings usurped
the thrones of conquerors who came from God knows where to conquer older
kings; roads built on the bones of conquered armies; houses and palaces
and subterranean passages that no man living knows the end of and few
even the beginning. Dark corridors and colonnades and hollow walls;
roofs that have ears and peep-holes; floors that are undermined by
secret stairs; trees that have swayed with the weight of rotting human
skulls and have shimmered with the silken bannerets of emperors. Such is
Hanadra, half-ruined, and surrounded by a wall that was age-old in the
dawn of written history.

Even its environs are mysterious; outside the walls, there are carven,
gloomy palaces that once re-echoed to the tink