t swaggered to the dark door, spurs jingling, looking back
across his shoulder once or twice, as though he half-regretted leaving
the Hindoo horseman's head upon his shoulders.

"Come in, sahib," advised the voice again. "They be many. We are few.
And, who knows--our roads may lie together yet."

Mahommed Gunga kicked his scabbard clear, and strode through the door.
The shadows inside and the hum of voices swallowed him as though he were
a big, red, black-legged devil reassimilated in the brewing broth of
trouble; but his voice boomed deep and loud after he had disappeared
from view.

"When their road and my road lie together, we will travel all feet
foremost!" he asserted.

Ten turnings further away by that time, Rosemary McClean pressed on
through the hot, dinning swarm of humanity, missing no opportunity to
slip her pony through an opening, but trying, too, to seem unaware that
she was followed. She chose narrow, winding ways, where the awnings
almost met above the middle of the street, and where a cavalcade of
horsemen would not be likely to follow her--only to hear a roar behind
her, as the prince's escort started slashing at the awnings with their
swords.

There was a rush and a din of shouting beside her and ahead, as the
frightened merchants scurried to pull down their awnings before
the ruthless horse-men could ride down on them; the narrow street
transformed itself almost on the instant into a undraped, cleared defile
between two walls. And after that she kept to the broader streets, where
there was room in the middle for a troop to follow, four abreast, should
it choose. She had no mind to seek her own safety at the expense of men
whose souls her father was laboring so hard to save.

She got no credit, though, for consideration--only blame for what the
swordsmen had already done. One man--a Maharati trader--half-naked,
his black hair coiled into a shaggy rope and twisted up above his
neck--followed her, side-tracking through the mazy byways of the
bewildering mart, and coming out ahead of her--or lurking beside bales
of merchandise and waiting his opportunity to leap from shadow into
shadow unobserved.

He followed her until she reached the open, where a double row of trees
on each side marked the edge of a big square, large enough for the
drilling of an army. Along one side of the square there ran the
high brick wall, topped with a kind of battlement, that guarded the
Maharajah's palace grounds from