aharajah and the British officers,
together with the crowd of nobles, officials and mounted attendants,
followed at a smart pace. The city was now waking to life. From their
windows the sleepy inhabitants stared at the party, mostly too stupefied
at that hour to recognise and salute their ruler. Pot-bellied naked
brown babies waddled on to the verandahs to gaze thumb in mouth at the
riders. Pariah dogs, nosing at the gutters and rubbish-heaps that
scented the air, bolted out of the way of the horses' hoofs.

As the sportsmen passed out of the city gates the sun was rising above
the horizon, the terrible Hot Weather sun of India, whose advent ushers
in the long hours of gasping, breathless heat. For a mile or so the
route lay through fertile gardens and fields. Then suddenly the
cultivation ended abruptly on the edge of a sandy desert that, seamed
with _nullahs_, or deep, steep-sided ravines, and dotted with tall
clumps of thorny cactus, stretched away to the horizon. The road became
a barely discernible track; but the two _sowars_ cantered on,
confidently heading for the spot where the fresh horses awaited the
party.

Over the sand the riders swept, past a slow-plodding elephant lumbering
back to the city with a load of fodder, by groups of tethered camels.
Hares started up in alarm and bounded away, grey partridges whirred up
and yellow-beaked _minas_ flew off chattering indignantly. The slight
morning coolness soon vanished; and Wargrave, soft and somewhat out of
condition after his weeks of shipboard life, wiped his streaming face
often before the guiding _sowars_ threw up their hands in warning and
vanished slowly from sight as their sure-footed horses picked their way
down a steep _nullah_. This was the ravine in which the quarry hid. One
after another of the riders followed the leaders down the narrow track,
trotted across the sandy, rock-strewn river-bed and climbed up the far
side to where the fresh horses and a picturesque mob of wild-looking
beaters stood awaiting them.

Among the animals Wargrave noticed a smart grey Arab pony with a
side-saddle.

"I see Mrs. Norton intends coming out with us," observed the Maharajah
looking at the pony. "We must wait for her."

"It won't be for long, sir," said Raymond, pointing to a rising trail of
dust on the track by which they had come. "I'll bet that is she."

All turned to watch the approaching rider draw near, until they could
see that it was a lady galloping f