of men
to whom they have not been sent."

Barlow had an intuition that the girl's words were not prompted by idle
curiosity. He was possessed of a sudden gloomy impression that she
knew something of the two men who rode. And it was strange that they
had not been seen upon either of the roads. The officer spoke of them
frankly, and not as a man hiding something.

Suddenly he took a firm resolve, perhaps a dangerous one; not dangerous
though if his men had really gone through.

"Gulab," he said,--and with his hand he turned her face up by the chin
till their eyes were close together,--"if the two bore a message for
me, and it was stolen, I would be like that one you loved was lost."

The beautiful face swung from his palm and he could hear her gasping.

"You know something?" he said, and he caressed the smooth black tresses.

"I did not see them, Sahib."

They rode in silence for half a mile and then she said, "Perhaps,
Sahib, Bootea can help you--if the message is lost."

"And you will, girl?"

"I will, Sahib; even if I die for doing it, I will."

His arm tightened about her with a shrug of assuring thankfulness, and
she knew that this man trusted her and was not sorry of her burden.
Little child-dreams floated through her mind that the silver-faced moon
would hang there above and light the world forever,--for the moon was
the soul of the god Purusha whose sacrificed body had created the
world,--and that she would ride forever in the arms of this fair-faced
god, and that they were both of one caste, the caste that had as mark
the sweet pain in the heart.

And Barlow was sometimes dropping the troubled thought of the missing
order and the turmoil that would be in the Council of the Governor
General when it became known, to mutter inwardly: "By Jove! if the
chaps get wind of this, that I carried the Gulab throughout a moonlit
night, there'll be nothing for me but to send in my papers. I'll be
drawn;--my leg'll be pulled." And he reflected bitterly that nothing
on earth, no protestation, no swearing by the gods, would make it
believed as being what it was. He chuckled once, picturing the face of
the immaculate Elizabeth while she thrust into him a bodkin of moral
autopsy, should she come to know of it.

Bootea thought he had sighed, and laying her slim fingers against his
neck said, "The Sahib is troubled."

"I don't care a damn!" he declared in English, his mind still on the
personal trail.

Seeing