airs, and Captain O'Rourke
legged his panting charger over to the roadside.

"Advance-guard, forward, trot!" commanded the lieutenant.

"Have you brought your wife with you?" demanded O'Rourke, peering into
the jingling blackness.

"No. Of course not. Why?"

"'Of course not! Why?' says the man! Hell and hot porridge! Why, the
whole of India's ablaze from end to end--the sepoys have mutinied to a
man, and the rest have joined them! There's bloody murder doing--they've
shot their officers--Hammond's dead and Carstairs and Welfleet and
heaven knows who else. They've burned their barracks and the stores and
they're trying to seize the magazine. If they get that, God help every
one. They're short of ammunition as it is, but two companies of the
Thirty-third can't hold out for long against that horde. You'll be in
the nick of time! Hurry, man! For the love of anything you like to name,
get a move on!"

IV.

"Trot, march!

"Canter!"

Bellairs was thinking of his wife, alone in Hanadra, unprotected except
by a sixty-year-old Risaldar and a half-brother who was a civilian and
an unknown quantity. There were cold chills running down his spine and
a sickening sensation in his stomach. He rode ahead of the guns, with
O'Rourke keeping pace beside him. He felt that he hated O'Rourke, hated
everything, hated the Service, and the country--and the guns, that could
put him into such a fiendish predicament.

O'Rourke broke silence first.

"Who is with your wife?" he demanded suddenly.

"Heaven knows! I left her under the protection of Risaldar Mahommed
Khan, but he was to ride off for an escort for her."

"Not your father's old Risaldar?" asked O'Rourke.

"The same."

"Then thank God! I'd sooner trust him than I would a regiment. He'll
bring her in alive or slit the throats of half Asia--maybe 'he'll do
both! Come, that's off our minds! She's safer with him than she would be
here. Have you lots of ammunition?"

"I brought all I had with me at Hanadra."

"Good! What you'll need tonight is grape!"

"I've lots of it. It's nearly all grape."

"Hurrah! Then we'll treat those dirty mutineers to a dose or two of
pills they won't fancy! Come on, man--set the pace a little faster!"

"Why didn't my orders say anything about a mutiny or bringing in my
wife?"

"Dunno! I didn't write 'em. I can guess, though. There'd be something
like nine reasons. For one thing, they'd credit you with sense enough to
bring her in wit