dust were all the trace or
explanation that he left. The mazy streets swallowed him; the Hindoo
waddled over to the arch and disappeared without a smile on his face to
show even interest. The interrupted trading and bartering went on again,
and no one commented or made a move to follow but Joanna.

She watched the fat Hindoo, and made sure that she would recognize him
anywhere again. Then, by a trail that no one would have guessed at and
few could have followed, she made her way to Jaimihr's palace--three
miles away from Howrah's--where a dozen sulky-looking sepoys lolled,
dismounted, by the wooden gate. There was neither sight nor sound of
mounted men, and the gate was shut; but in the middle of the roadway
there was smoking dung, and there was a suspicion of overacting about
the indifference of the guardians of the entrance.

There was no overacting, though, in what Joanna did. Nobody would have
dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in anything
at all except the coppers that she begged for. She squatted in
the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight,
alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge of
unguessed-at witchcraft.

She was there still at midday when they changed the guard. She was
there when night fell, still squatting in the roadway, still exchanging
repartee and hints at the supernatural with armed men who shuddered now
and then between their bursts of mockery. The sore, suffering dogs that
sniff through the night for worse eyesores than themselves whimpered and
watched her. The guard changed and the moon paled, but she stayed
on; and whatever her purpose, or whatever information she obtained in
fragments amid the raillery, she did not return to the mission house.

It was not until Rosemary McClean returned and dismounted by the door
that she realized Joanna had not kept pace. Even then she thought little
of it; the old woman often lingered on the homeward way when the chance
of her being needed was remote. Two or three hours passed before the
suspicion rose that anything might have happened to Joanna, and even
then she might not have been remembered had not Duncan McClean asked for
her.

"I have changed my mind," he said, calling Rosemary into the long, low
living-room. It was darkened to exclude the hot wind and the glare, and
he looked like a ghost as he rose to meet her. "I have decided that my
duty is to get away from this place for your sake