ll but gone out except for
that figure in his arms that was so like a lotus; and the death would
have meant not just the forfeit of his life, but that his duty, the
mission he was upon for his own people, the British government, had
been jeopardised by his participation in some native affair of strife,
something he had nothing to do with. He had ridden along that road
hoping to overtake the two riders that now lay dead in the pit with the
other victims of the thugs--of which he knew nothing. They were
bearing to him a secret message from his government, and he had ridden
to Manabad to there take it from them lest in approaching the city of
the Peshwa, full of seditious spies and cutthroats, the paper might be
stolen. But at Manabad he had learned that the two had passed, had
ridden on; and then, perhaps because of converging different roads, he
had missed them.

But most extraordinarily, just one of the curious, tangented ways of
Fate, the written order lay against his chest sewn between the double
sole of a sandal. Once or twice the hard leather caused him to turn
slightly the girl's body, and he thought it some case in which she
carried jewels.

CHAPTER X

They had gone perhaps an eighth of a mile when the road they followed
joined another, joined in an arrowhead. The grey turned to the left, to
the west, the homing instinct telling him that that way lay his stall in
the city of the Peshwa.

"This was the way of my journey, Bootea," Barlow said; "I rode from
yonder," and he nodded back toward the highway into which the two roads
wedged. "It was here that I heard your call, the call of a woman in
dread. Also it might have been a business that interested me if it were
a matter of waylaying travellers. Did you see two riders of large
horses, such as Arabs or of the breed I ride, men who rode as do
_sowars_?"

"No, Sahib, I did not see them."

This was not a lie for it was Ajeet who had seen them, and because of the
Sahib's interest she knew the two men must have been of his command; and
if she spoke of them undoubtedly he would go back and be killed.

"Were they servants of yours, Sahib--these men who rode?"

Barlow gave off but a little sliver of truth: "No," he answered; "but at
Manabad men spoke of them passing this way, journeying to Poona, and if
they were strangers to this district, it might be that they had taken the
wrong road at the fork. But if you did not see them they will be ahead."