fleeing Hunsa: and if the decoits
came--for already they would be making ready for the road--this
beautiful god, with eyes like stars and a voice of music, would be
killed, would be no more than the Bagree lying on the road who was but
carrion. In her heart was a new thing. The struggle with Hunsa, the
fright, even the horribleness of the blood upon her knife, was washed
away by a hot surging flood of exquisite happiness. The Hindu name for
love--"a pain in the heart"--was veritably hers in its intensity; the
sahib's arm about her when she had closed her eyes had caused her to
feel as if she were being lifted to heaven.

She laid a hand on Barlow's arm and her eyes were lifted pleadingly to
his: "You must go, Sahib--mount your horse and go, because--"

"Because of what?"

"There are many, and you will be killed. Hunsa will bring others."

"Others--who are they?"

But the Gulab had turned from him and was listening, her eyes turned to
the road up which floated from beyond upon the hushed silence that was
about them,--that seemed deeper because of the dead man lying in the
moonlight,--the beat of Hunsa's feet on the road. Once there was the
whining note of wheels that claimed a protest from a dry axle; once
there was a clang as if steel had struck steel; and on the droning
through the night-hush was a rasping hum as if voices clamoured in the
distance. This was the bee-hive stirring of the startled village.

"What is it, Bootea?" Barlow asked.

The eyes raised to his face were full of fright, a pleading fright.
"Sahib," she answered, "do not ask--just go, because--"

"Yes, girl, why?"

"That this is dead (and her hand gestured toward the slain Bagree) and
that others are dead, is; but you,--will you mount the horse and go
back the way you came, Sahib?"

Her small fingers clutched the sleeve of the coat he wore--it was of
hunting cloth, red-and-green: "Others are dead yonder, and evil is in
the hearts of those that live. Go, Sahib--please go."

Barlow's mind was racing fast, in more materialistic grooves than the
Gulab's. There was something about it he didn't understand; something
the girl did not want to tell him; some horrible thing that she was
afraid of--her face was full of suppressed dread.

Suddenly, through no sequence of reasoning, in fact there was no data
to go upon, nothing except that a girl--the Gulab was just that--stood
there afraid--through him she had just escaped from a man who was