one?"

Joanna shook her head.

"Tell me the truth, Joanna. Whose blood is that?"

"A dog's, Miss-sahib. A street dog attacked me as I ran hither."

"I wish I could believe it!"

"I too!" said her father, and he took Joanna to one side and
cross-examined her. But he could get no admission from her--nothing but
the same statement, with added details each time he made her tell it,
that she had killed a dog.

They fed her, and she ate like a hyena. No caste prejudices or forbidden
foods troubled her; she ate whatever came her way, Hindoo food, or
Mohammedan, or Christian,--and reached for more--and finished, as hyenas
finish, by breaking bones to get the marrow out. At midnight they left
her, curled dogwise on a mat in the hall, to sleep; and at dawn, when
they came to wake her, she was gone again--gone utterly, without a trace
or sign of explanation. The doors, both front and back, were locked.

It was two days later when they found a hole torn through the thatch,
through which she had escaped; and though they searched the house from
cellar up to roof, and turned all their small possessions over, they
could not find (and they were utterly glad of it) that she had stolen
anything.

"Thank God for that!" said the missionary.

"I've finished disbelieving in Joanna!" said his daughter with a grimace
that went always with irrevocable decision.

"I've come to the conclusion," said McClean, "that there are more than
just Joanna to be trusted. There is Ali Partab, and--who knows how
many?"

CHAPTER XVII

Against all fear; against the weight of what,
For lack of worse name, men miscall the Law;
Against the Tyranny of Creed; against the hot,
Foul Greed of Priest, and Superstition's Maw;
Against all man-made Shackles, and a man-made Hell--
Alone--At last--Unaided--
I REBEL!

No single, individual circumstance, but a chain of happenings in very
quick succession, brought about a climax, forcing the hand of Howrah
and his brother and for the moment drawing the McCleans, father and
daughter, into the toothed wheel of Indian action. As usual in India,
the usual brought about the unexpected, and the unexpected fitted
strangely into the complex, mysteriously worked-out whole.

Two days after Joanna left the mission house, through a hole made in the
thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again. The
stuffy, narrow quarters--the insolent, doubled, unexplaine