om you might care to speak. I will have a
room made ready. Have I leave to ask questions of my cousin here?"

Cunningham bowed in recognition of his courtesy, and walked away to
a point whence he could look from the beetling parapet away and away
across desert that shone hot and hazy-rimmed on every side. If this were
a man on whom he must depend for following--if any of all the more
than hints dropped by the risaldar were true--it seemed to him that his
reception was a little too chilly to be hopeful.

After a minute or two he turned his eyes away from the dazzling plain
below and faced about to inspect the paved courtyard. Round it, on
three sides of a parallelogram, there ran a beautifully designed and
wonderfully worked-out veranda-fronted building, broken here and there
by cobbled passages that evidently led to other buildings on the far
edge of the rock. In the centre, covered by a roof like a temple-dome
in miniature, was the ice-cold spring, whose existence made the fort
tenable. Under the veranda, on a long, low lounge, was a sight that
arrested his attention--held him spell-bound--drew him, tingling in
a way he could not have explained--drew him--drew him, slow-footed,
awkward, red--across the courtyard.

He heard Mahommed Gunga swear aloud; he recognized the wording of the
belly-growled Rangar oath; but it did not occur to him that what
he saw--what was drawing him--could be connected with it. He looked
straight ahead and walked ahead--reached the edge of the veranda--took
his helmet off--and stood still, feeling like an idiot, with the sun
full on his head.

"I'd advise you to step into the shade," said a voice that laughed more
sweetly than the chuckling spring. "I don't know who you are, but I'm
more glad to see you than I ever was in my life to see anybody. I can't
get up, because I'm too stiff; the ride to here from Howrah City all but
killed me, and I'm only here still because I couldn't ride another yard.
My father will be out in a moment. He's half-dead too."

"My name is Cunningham."

"I'm Miss McClean. My father was a missionary in Howrah."

She nodded to a chair beside her, and Cunningham took it, feeling
awkward, as men of his type usually do when they meet a woman in a
strange place.

"How in the world did you get in?" she asked him. "It's two days now
since the Alwa-sahib told us that the whole country is in rebellion. How
is it that you managed to reach here? According to Alwa, no whit