od!" she cried, her hand at her heart.

"What has happened here?" asked Dermot, entering the room.

Fred let fall the curtain as he answered:

"Hell's broke loose on the garden, sir. The coolies have mutinied. Parry's
dead, murdered; and we're alive only by the kind mercies of that brute
Chunerbutty, damn him! You were right about him, Major; and I was a
fool.... Is it true you've been attacked up in Ranga Duar?" he continued.

"Are you wounded, Major Dermot?" broke in the girl anxiously.

"No, Miss Daleham. I'm quite safe and sound."

Then he told them briefly what had happened. When he had finished he asked
them when the trouble began at Malpura.

"Three days ago," replied Fred. "The wind was blowing from the north, and
we heard firing up in the mountains. I thought you were having an extra go
of musketry there. But the coolies suddenly stopped work and gathered
outside their village, where those infernal Brahmins harangued them. I went
to order them back to their jobs----".

"Where was Parry?"

"Lying dead drunk in his bungalow. Well, some of the coolies attacked me
with _lathis_, others tried to protect me. The Brahmins told me that the
end of the British _Raj_ (dominion) had come and that you were being
attacked in Ranga Duar by a big army from China and would be wiped out.
Then I was hustled back to the bungalow where those Mohammedan servants
that you got for us--lucky you did!--turned out with rifles, which they
said afterwards you'd given them, and wanted to fire on the mob. But I
stopped them."

"Where was Chunerbutty?"

"Oh, he hadn't thrown off the mask yet. He came to me and said he was a
prisoner and would not be allowed to leave the estate. But he advised me to
ride over to Granger or some of the other fellows and get their help. But I
wouldn't leave Noreen; and Sher Afzul told me that it was as bad on the
other gardens. But only today the real trouble began."

"What happened?"

"Some news apparently reached the coolies that drove them mad with delight.
They murdered the Parsi storekeeper, looted his place, and got drunk on his
_daru_. Then they started killing the few Mohammedans we had on the estate.
Some of the women and children got to us and we took them in. But the rest,
even the little babies, were murdered by the brutes.

"I went over to Parry, but he was still too drunk to understand me. I was
trying to rouse him when I heard shouts and ran out on the verandah. All
the coolies, me