ent, but by a trick. It was the _sahib's_ will that she
should run away. And he chose this road so that he might be far from
habitation, well knowing that for every mile on the lower road there are
two miles to be travelled on this. _Mem-sahib_, your servant has spoken,
and he prays you to beware. There is danger in your path."

"But--but," gasped Beryl, "how do you know all this? What makes you tell
me? You can't know what you are saying!"

She was thoroughly frightened by this time, and heat and faintness were
alike forgotten. Incredible as was the story to which she had listened,
there was about it a vividness that made it terrifying.

"But I don't understand," she said helplessly, as the snake-charmer
remained silent to her questions. "It is not possible! It could not be!"

He lifted his head a little and, from the depths of the _chuddah_, she
knew that piercing eyes surveyed her.

"_Mem-sahib_," he said, "your servant knew that this would happen, and
he came here swiftly by a secret way to warn you. More, he knows that
when Fletcher _sahib_ returns, he will speak lightly of the accident, so
that the _mem-sahib_ will have no fear. 'A broken shaft is soon mended,'
he will say. 'My servant has returned to Farabad--to a man he knows. We
will rest under the trees but a furlong from this place till he comes
back.' But, most gracious, he will not come back. There is no place at
Farabad at this time of the fair where the work could be done. Moreover,
the _saice_ has his orders, and he will not seek one. He will go back to
Kundaghat with the mare, but he will walk all the way. It is fifteen
miles from here by the road. He will not reach it ere nightfall. He will
not return till after the darkness falls, and then he will miss the
road. He will not find Fletcher _sahib_ and the gracious lady before the
sunrise."

Thus, in brief but telling sentences, the old native revealed to the
white-faced woman before him the whole abominable plot. She listened to
him in a growing agony of doubt. Could it be? Was it by any means
possible that Fletcher, desiring to win her, but despairing of lessening
the distance she maintained between them by any ordinary method, had
devised this foul scheme of compromising her in the eyes of society in
order to force her to accept him?

Her cheeks burned furiously at the intolerable suspicion. It made her
wholly forget that the man before her was an evil-looking native of whom
she knew nothing wh