reached the courtyard.

"Evening, Miss McClean," said Cunningham; and she all but fainted, she
was strained to such a pitch of nervousness.

"Where have you come from, Miss McClean?" asked Cunningham. And she told
him. She was not quite so stiff-chinned as she had been.

"What were you doing there?"

She told him that, too.

"Where is your father?"

"In his chair on the veranda, Mr. Cunningham. There, in that deep
shadow."

"Come to him, please. I want your explanation in his presence."

She followed as obediently as a child. The sense of guilt--of fright--of
impending judgment left her as she walked with him, and gave place to a
glow of comfort that here should be a man on whom to lean. She did not
fight the new sensation, for she was growing strangely weary of the
other one. By the time that they had reached her father, and he was
standing before Cunningham wiping his spectacles in his nervous way, she
had completely recovered her self-possession, although it is likely she
would not have given any reason for it to herself.

Cunningham held a lantern up, so that he could study both their faces.
His own face muscles were set rigidly, and he questioned them as
he might have cross-examined a spy caught in the act. His voice was
uncompromising, and his manner stern.

"Do you both understand how serious this situation is?" he asked.

"We naturally do," said Duncan McClean. The Scotsman was beginning to
betray an inclination to bridle under the youngster's attitude, and to
show an equally pronounced desire not to appear to. "More so, probably,
than anybody else!"

"Are you positive--both of you--you too, Mr. McClean--that all that talk
about treasure in Howrah City is not mere imagination and legend?"

"Absolutely positive!" They both answered him at once, both looking in
his eyes across the unsteady rays of the flickering, smoky lamp. "The
amount has been, of course, much exaggerated," said McClean, "but I have
no doubt there is enough there to pay the taxes of all India for a year
or two."

"Then I have another question to ask. Do you both--or do you
not--place yourselves at the service of the Company? It is likely to be
dangerous--a desperate service. But the Company needs all that it can
muster."

"Of course we do!" Again both answered in one breath.

"Do you understand that that involves taking my orders?"

This time Duncan McClean did the answering, and now it was he who seized
the lamp. He held