heard nothing for three weeks. How
is it at Cawnpore?"

"Cawnpore has been taken by the Nana. They surrendered on his solemn
oath that all should be allowed to depart in safety. He broke his oath,
and there are not ten of its defenders alive. The women are all in
captivity."

Bathurst groaned. He had hardly hoped that the handful of defenders
could have maintained themselves against such overpowering numbers, but
the certainty as to their fate was a heavy blow.

"And Lucknow?" he asked.

"The Residency holds out at present, but men say that it must soon
fall."

"And what do you say?"

"I say nothing," the man said; "we cannot use our art in matters which
concern ourselves."

"And Delhi?"

"There is a little force of whites in front of Delhi; there are tens of
thousands of Sepoys in the town, but as yet the whites have maintained
themselves. The chiefs of the Punjaub have proved faithless to their
country, and there the British rule is maintained."

"Thank God for that!" Bathurst exclaimed; "as long as the Punjaub holds
out the tables may be turned. And the other Presidencies?"

"Nothing as yet," Rujub said, in a tone of discontent.

"Then you are against us, Rujub?"

The man stopped.

"Sahib, I know not what I wish now. I have been brought up to hate the
whites. Two of my father's brothers were hung as Thugs, and my father
taught me to hate the men who did it. For years I have worked quietly
against you, as have most of those of my craft. We have reason to hate
you. In the old times we were honored in the land--honored and feared;
for even the great ones knew that we had powers such as no other men
have. But the whites treat us as if we were mere buffoons, who play
for their amusement; they make no distinction between the wandering
conjurer, with his tricks of dexterity, and the masters, who have powers
that have been handed down from father to son for thousands of years,
who can communicate with each other though separated by the length of
India; who can, as you have seen, make men invisible; who can read
the past and the future. They see these things, and though they cannot
explain them, they persist in treating us all as if we were mere
jugglers.

"They prefer to deny the evidence of their own senses rather than admit
that we have powers such as they have not; and so, even in the eyes of
our own countrymen, we have lost our old standing and position, while
the whites would bribe us with money to