to talk to him, and he seemed pleased, conversing
eagerly, sometimes in excellent English, and at others in Hindustani,
and so the time passed on, till I found by the darkness and the blotting
out of the stars that we were going along a forest path.

The ride had seemed peculiar before, now it was far more strange, from
peculiar shadows cast upon the tree trunks, and the various effects of
light and shade as the smoky torches played about us, and formed a long
line of light both in front and rear.

At last the excitement of the evening and the unwonted exercise in my
weak state began to tell, and I was very silent. The journey had now
lost its interest, the motion of the elephant became almost intolerable,
and I was beginning to feel that I would give anything to go to my couch
in the tent and lie down and sleep, when, just as I noticed that the
stars were out again overhead, the rajah suddenly exclaimed--

"There is your future home, Gil;" and, as I followed the direction of
his pointing hand, I saw a light glow in the distance as of a fire, out
of which a flash suddenly rose, and then ended in a burst of stars, the
tiny sparks showing that they were at a considerable distance yet.

"Signs of rejoicing," he said to me, with a smile.

Then, evidently noticing how exhausted I looked, he said quickly--

"We shall not be long, and you can go to your room directly we reach my
palace."

"His palace!" I thought bitterly; "the palace of a syce." And I was
thinking of it all contemptuously when my hand fell upon the gems which
encrusted my sword-hilt, and I felt that Ny Deen must be one of the
wealthiest of the native chiefs.

The distance that we had to traverse was not great, and I saw emissaries
in the form of sowars dashing forward to announce our coming; but I felt
very weak as I sat back watching the glare of light get brighter and
brighter till I could see that it was rising from among houses, and that
in front of them was a kind of gate hung with lanthorns, while others
kept coming into sight and growing more clear as we approached. Then I
could see the tops of temples and minarets standing up full in the
increasing glare, which made plain at last that we were approaching a
city of considerable size, one that was evidently illuminated in the
rajah's honour, so that the place to which he had taken the guns, and
where we had recovered them, could only have been one of his villages.

In spite of my weariness,