e there when the finish
came--a dog's disregard of all object or objective but his master's--but
a long-thrown stride, and a crafty, beady eye that promised more
usefulness than a dog's when called on.

The first word spoken was when Rosemary drew rein a little more than
half-way along the palace wall.

"Are you tired yet, Joanna?"

"Uh-uh!" the woman answered, shaking her head violently and pointing at
the sun that mounted every minute higher. The argument was obvious; in
less than twenty minutes the whole horizon would be shimmering again
like shaken plates of brass; wherever the other end might be, a rest
would be better there than here! Her mistress nodded, and rode on again,
faster yet; she had learned long ago that Joanna could show a dusty
pair of heels to almost anything that ran, and she had never yet
known distance tire her; it had been the thought of distance and speed
combined that made her pause and ask.

She did not stop again until they had cantered up through the awakening
bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out
their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started
nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had
shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the
advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies,
and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch
of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga's boots and spurs had caught
her eye once.

"Now, Joanna!" She leaned back from the saddle and spoke low, but with
a certain thrill. "Go in there, find me Mahommed Gunga-sahib's man, and
bring him out here!"

"And if he will not come?" The old woman seemed half-afraid to enter.

"Go in, and don't come out without him--unless you want to see me go in
by myself!"

The old woman looked at her piercingly with eyes that gleamed from amid
a bunch of wrinkles, then motioned with a skinny arm in the direction of
an awning where shade was to be had from the dangerous early sun-rays.
She made no move to enter through the arch until her mistress had taken
shelter.

Fifteen minutes later she emerged with Ali Partab, who looked sleepy,
but still more ashamed of his unmilitary dishabille. Rosemary McClean
glanced left and right--forgot about the awning and the custom which
decrees aloofness--ignored the old woman's waving arm and Ali Partab's
frown, and rode toward him eagerly.