n, and always have been so; else you
would not have left your people to go to be servant among the
whites. However, I will do what I can for you, for the sake of my
mother's sister and of our kinship."

On the way up the hills Soyera stopped, several times, to pick
berries. When they halted she went aside and pounded them, and then
boiled them in some water in a lota--a copper vessel--Sufder lent
her for the purpose, and dyed the child's head and body with it,
producing a colour corresponding to her own.

The party, which was composed of men from several towns and
villages, broke up the next morning.

"Have you money?" Sufder asked her, as she was about to start alone
on her journey.

"Yes; my savings were all lodged for me, by Major Lindsay, with
some merchants at Bombay; but I have twenty rupees sewn up in my
garments."

"As to your savings, Soyera, you are not likely to see them again,
for we shall make a clean sweep of Bombay. However, twenty rupees
will be useful to you, and would keep you for three or four months,
if you needed but, as you are going to my wife, you will not want
them.

"Take this dagger. When you show it to her, she will know that you
come from me; but mind, she is, like most women, given to gossip;
therefore I warn you not to let her into the secret of this child's
birth, for if you did so, half the town would know it in the course
of a day or two.

"Now, I must go back with my men to join a party who are on their
way to fight the English. I should have gone there direct, but met
the others starting on this marauding expedition, which was so much
to the taste of my men that I could not restrain them from joining.
I shall see you at Jooneer, as soon as matters are finished with
the English; then I shall, after staying a few days there, rejoin
Scindia, in whose service I am."

Soyera started on her way. At the villages through which she
passed, she was questioned as to where she came from; and replied
that she had been living down near Bombay but, now that the English
were going to fight the Mahrattas, she was coming home, having lost
her husband a few months before.

As the road to Jooneer diverged widely from that to Poona, she was
asked no questions about the war. All were confident that the
defeat of the English was certain, now that Scindia and Holkar and
the government of the Peishwa had laid aside their mutual
jealousies, and had joined for the purpose of crushing the whites.