On the Face of the Waters

BOOK IV
CHAPTER IV

BUGLES AND FIFES.

There was a blessed coolness in the air, for the rains had broken, the molten heats of June had passed. And still that handful of obstinate aliens clung like barnacles to the bare red rocks of the Ridge. Clung all the closer because in one corner of it, beside the canal, they had become part of the soil itself in rows on rows of new-made graves. A strong rear-guard this, what with disease and exposure superadded to skirmishes and target-practice. Yet, though not a gun in the city had been silenced, not a battery advanced a yard, the living garrison day after day dug these earthworks for the dead one, firm as it, in silent resolve to yield no inch of foot-hold on those rocks till the Judgment Day, when Men and Murderers should pass together to the great settlement of this world's quarrels.

And yet those in command began to look at each other, and ask what the end was to be, for though, despite the daily drain, the Widow's Cruse grew in numbers as time went on, the city grew also, portentously.

Still the men were cheerful, the Ridge strangely unlike a war-camp in some ways; for the country to the rear was peaceful, posts came every day, and there was no lack even of luxuries. Grain merchants deserting their city shops set up amid the surer payments of the cantonment bazaar, and the greed for gain brought hawkers of fruit, milk, and vegetables to run the gauntlet of the guns, while some poor folk living on their wits, when there was not a rag or a patch or a bit of wood left to be looted in the deserted bungalows, took to earning pennies by tracking the big shot as they trundled in the ravines, and bringing them to the masters, who needed them.

Between the rain-showers too, men, after the manner of Englishmen, began to talk of football matches, sky races, and bewail the fact of the racket court being within range of the walls. But some, like Major Reid, who never left his post at Hindoo Rao's house for three months, preferred to face the city always. To watch it as a cat watches a mouse to which she means to deal death by and by. Herbert Erlton was one of these, and so his old khânsaman, with whom Kate used to quarrel over his terribly Oriental ideas of Irish stew and such like—would bring him his lunch, sometimes his dinner, to the pickets. It was quite a dignified procession, with a cook-boy carrying a brazier, so that the Huzoor's food should be hot, and the bhisti carrying a porous pot of water holding bottles, so that the Huzoor's drink might be cool. The khânsaman, a wizened figure with many yards of waistband swathed round his middle, leading the way with the mint sauce for the lamb, or the mustard for the beefsteak. He used at first to mumble charms and vows for safe passage as he crossed the valley of the shadow; as a dip where round shot loved to dance was nicknamed by the men. But so many others of his trade were bringing food to the master that he soon grew callous to the danger, and grinned like the rest when a wild caper to dodge a trundling, thundering ball made a fair-haired laddie remark sardonically to the caperer, "It's well for you, my boy, that you haven't spilled my dinner."

Perhaps it was, considering the temper of the times. Herbert Erlton, eating his lunch, sheltered from the pelting rain behind the low scarp which by this time scored the summit of the Ridge, smiled also. He was all grimed and smirched with helping young Light—the gayest dancer in Upper India—with his guns. He helped wherever he could in his spare time, for a great restlessness came over him when out of sight of those rose-red walls. They had a fascination for him since Jim Douglas' failure to return had left him uncertain what they held. So, when the day's work slackened, as it always did toward sunset, and the rain clearing, he had drifted back to his tent for a bath and a change, he drifted out again along the central road, where those off duty were lounging, and the sick had their beds set out for the sake of company and cooler air. It was a quieter company than usual, for some two days before the General himself had joined the rear-guard by the canal; struck down by cholera, and dying with the half-conscious, wholly pathetic words on his lips, "strengthen the right."

And that very day the auctions of his and other dead comrades' effects had been held; so that more than one usually thoughtless youngster looked down, maybe, on a pair of shoes into which he had stepped over a grave.

Still it was an eager company, as it discussed Lieutenant Hills' exploit of the morning, and asked for the latest bulletin of that reckless young fighter with fists against the swords.

"How was it?" asked the Major, "I only heard the row. The beggars must have got clean into camp."

"Right up to the artillery lines. You see it was so beastly misty and rainy, and they were dressed like the native vidette. So Hills, thinking them friends, let them pass his two guns, until they began charging the Carabineers; and then it was too late to stop 'em."

"Why?"

"Carabineers—didn't stand, somehow, except their officer. So Hills charged instead. By George! I'd have given a fiver to see him do it. You know what a little chap he is—a boy to look at. And then——"

"And then," interrupted the Doctor, who had been giving a glance at a ticklish bandage as he passed the bed round which the speakers were gathered, "I think I can tell you in his own words; for he was quite cool and collected when they brought him in—said it was from bleeding so much about the head——"

A ripple of mirth ran through the listeners, but Major Erlton did not smile this time; the laugh was too tender.

"He said he thought if he charged it would be a diversion, and give time to load up. So he rode—Yes! I should like to have seen it too!—slap at the front rank, cut down the first fellow, slashed the next over the face. Then the two following crashed into him, and down he went at such a pace that he only got a slice to his jacket and lay snug till the troop—a hundred and fifty or so—rode over him. Then—ha—ha! he got up and looked for his sword! Had just found it ten yards off, when three of them turned back for him. He dropped one from his horse, dodged the other, who had a lance, and finally gashed him over the head. Number three was on foot—the man he'd dropped, he thinks, at first—and they had a regular set to. Then Hills' cloak, soaked with rain, got round his throat and half choked him, and the brute managed to disarm him. So he had to go for him with his fists, and by punching merrily at his head managed all right till he tripped over his cloak and fell——"

"And then," put in another voice eagerly, "Tombs, his Major, who had been running from his tent through the thick of those charging devils on foot to see what was up that the Carabineers should be retiring, saw him lying on the ground, took a pot shot at thirty paces—and dropped his man!"

"By George, what luck!" commented someone; "he must have been blown!"

"Accustomed to turnips, I should say," remarked another, with a curiously even voice; the voice of one with a lump in his throat, and a slight difficulty in keeping steady.

"Did they kill the lot?" asked Major Erlton quickly.

"Bungled it rather, but it was all right in the end. They were a plucky set, though; charged to the very middle of the camp, shouting to the black artillery to join them, to come back with them to Delhi."

"But they met with a pluckier lot!" interrupted the man who had suggested turnips. "The black company wasn't ready for action. The white one behind it was; unlimbered, loaded. And the blackies knew it. So they called out to fire—fire at once—fire sharp—fire through them—Well! d——n it all, black or white, I don't care, it's as plucky a thing as has been done yet." He moved away, his hands in his pockets, attempting a whistle; perhaps to hide his trembling lips.

"I agree," said the Doctor gravely, "though it wasn't necessary to take them at their word. But somehow it makes that mistake afterward all the worse."

"How many of the poor beggars were killed, Doctor," asked an uneasy voice in the pause which followed.

"Twenty or so. Grass-cutters and such like. They were hiding in the cemetery from the troopers, who were slashing at everyone, and our men pursuing the party which escaped over the canal bridge—made—made a mistake. And—I'm sorry to say there was a woman——"

"There have been too many mistakes of that sort," said an older voice, breaking the silence. "I wish to God some of us would think a bit. What would our lives be without our servants, who, let us remember, outnumber us by ten to one? If they weren't faithful——"

"Not quite so many, Colonel," remarked the Doctor with a nod of approval. "Twenty families came to the Brigade-major to-day with their bundles, and told him they preferred the quiet of home to the distraction of camp. I don't wonder."

"It is all their own fault," broke in an angry young voice, "why did they——"

And so began one of the arguments, so common in camp, as to the right of revenge pure and simple. Arguments fostered by the newspapers, where, every day, letters appeared from "Spartacus," or "Fiat Justitia," or some such nom de plume. Letters all alike in one thing, that they quoted texts of Scripture. Notably one about a daughter of Babylon and the blessedness of throwing children on stones.

But Major Erlton did not stop to listen to it. The ethics of the question did not interest him, and in truth mere revenge was lost in him in the desire, not so much to kill, as to fight. To go on hacking and hewing for ever and ever. As he drifted on smoking his cigar he thought quite kindly of the poor devils of grass-cutters who really worked uncommonly well; just, in fact, as if nothing had happened. So did the old khânsaman, and the sweeper who had come back to him on his return to the Ridge, saying that the Huzoor would find the tale of chickens complete. And the garden of the ruined house near the Flagstaff Tower whither his feet led him unconsciously, as they often did of an evening, was kept tidy; the gardener—when he saw the tall figure approaching—going over to a rose-bush, which, now that the rain had fallen, was new budding with white buds, and picking him a buttonhole. He sat down on the plinth of the veranda twiddling it idly in his fingers as he looked out over the panorama of the eastern plains, the curving river, and the city with the white dome of the mosque hanging unsupported above the smoke and mist wreaths. For now, at sunsetting, the sky was a mass of rose-red and violet cloud and a white steam rose from the dripping trees and the moist ground. It was a perfect picture. But he only saw the city. That, to him, was India. That filled his eye. The wide plains east and west, north and south, where the recent rain had driven every thought save one of a harvest to come, from the minds of millions, where the master meant simply the claimer of revenue, might have been non-existent so far as he, and his like, were concerned.

Yet even for the city he had no definite conception. He merely looked at it idly, then at the rosebud he held. And that reminding him of a certain white marble cross with "Thy will be done" on it, he rose suddenly, almost impatiently. But there was no resignation in his face, as he wandered toward the batteries again with the white flower of a blameless life stuck in his old flannel coat and a strange conglomerate of pity and passion in his heart, while the city—as the light faded—grew more and more like the clouds above it, rose-red and purple; until, in the distance, it seemed a city of dreams.

In truth it was so still, despite the clangor of bugles and fifes which Bukht Khân brought with him when, on the 1st of July, he crossed the swollen river in boats with five thousand mutineers. A square-shouldered man was Bukht Khân, with a broad face and massive beard; a massive sonorous voice to match. A man of the Cromwell type, of the church militant, disciplinarian to the back-bone, believing in drill, yet with an eye to a Providence above platoon exercise. And there was no lack of soldiers to drill in Delhi by this time. They came in squads and battalions, to jostle each other in the streets and overflow into the camp on the southern side of the city; that furthest from the obstinate colony on the Ridge. But first they flung themselves against it in all the ardor of new brooms, and failing to sweep the barnacles away, subsided into the general state of dreaminess and drugs. For the bugles and fifes could always be disobeyed on the plea that they were not sounded by the right Commander-in-Chief. There were three of them now. Bukht Khân the Queen's nominee, Mirza Moghul, and another son of the King's, Khair Sultân. So that Abool-Bukr's maudlin regrets for possible office became acute, and Newâsi's despairing hold on his hand had to gain strength from every influence she could bring to bear upon it. Even drunkenness and debauchery were safer than intrigue, to that vision of retribution which seemed to have left him, and taken to haunting her day and night. So she held him fast, and when he was not there wept and prayed, and listened hollow-eyed to a Moulvie who preached at the neighboring mosque; a man who preached a judgment.

"Thou art losing thy looks, mine Aunt," said the Prince to her one day. Not unkindly; on the contrary, almost tenderly. "Dost know, Newâsi, thou art more woman than most, for thou dost brave all things, even loss of good name—for I swear even these Mufti folk complain of thee—for nothing. None other I know would do it, so I would not have it—for something. Yet some day we shall quarrel over it; some day thy patience will go; some day thou wilt be as others, thinking of thyself; and then——"

"And then, nephew?" she asked coldly.

He laughed, mimicking her tone. "And then I shall grow tired and go mine own way to mine own end."

In the meantime, however, the thrummings and drummings went on until Kate Erlton, watching a sick bed hard by, felt as if she must send round and beg for quiet. It seemed quite natural she should do so, for she was completely absorbed over that patient of hers, who, without being seriously ill, would not get better. Who passed from one relapse of fever to another with a listless impatience, and now, nearly a month after he had stumbled over the threshold, lay barely convalescent. It had been a strange month. Stranger even than the previous one, when she had dragged through the lonely days as best she could, and he had wandered in and out restlessly, full of strain and stress. If even that had been a curious linking of their fates, what was this when she tended him day and night, when the weeks slipped by securely, almost ignorantly? For though Soma came every day to inquire after the master, standing at the door to salute to her, spick and span in full uniform, he brought no disturbing news.

It seemed to her, now, that she had known Jim Douglas all his life. And in truth she had learned something of the real man during the few days of delirium consequent on the violent inflammation which set in on the injured ankle. But for the most part he had muttered and moaned in liquid Persian. He had always spoken it with Zora, who had been taught it as part of her attractions, and no doubt it was the jingle of the jewels as Kate tended him, which reminded him of that particular part of his life.

By the time he came to himself, however, she had removed all the fineries, finding them in the way; save the heavy gold bangle which would not come off—at least not without help. He used to watch it half confusedly at first as it slipped up and down her arm, and wondered why she had not asked Tara to take it off for her; but he grew rather to like the look of it; to fancy that she had kept it on on purpose, to be glad that she had; though it was distinctly hard when she raised him up on his pillows! For, after all, fate linked them strangely, and he was grateful to her—very grateful.

"You are laughing at me," she said one morning as she came up to his bed, with a tray improvised out of a brass platter, and found him smiling.

"I have been laughing at you all the morning, when I haven't been grumbling," he replied, "at you and the chicken tea, and that little fringed business, to do duty as a napkin, I suppose, and the fly-paper—which isn't the least use, by the way, and I'm sure I could make a better one—and the mosquito net to give additional protection to my beauty when I fall asleep. Who could help laughing at it?"

She looked at him reproachfully. "But it makes you more comfortable, surely?"

"Comfortable," he echoed, "my dear lady! It is a perfect convalescent home!"

But in the silence which followed his right hand clenched itself over a fold in the quilt unmistakably.

"If you will take your chicken tea," she replied cheer-fully, despite a faint tremble in her voice, "you will soon get out of it. And really, Mr. Greyman, you don't seem to have lost any chance. Soma is not very communicative, but everything seems as it was. I never keep back anything from you. But, indeed, the chief thing in the city seems that there is no money to pay the soldiers. Do you know, I'm afraid Soma must loot the shops like the others. He seems to get things for nothing; though of course they are extraordinarily cheap. When I was a mem I used to pay twice as much for eggs."

He interrupted her with a laugh that had a tinge of bitterness in it. "Do you happen to know the story of the Jew who was eating ham during a thunderstorm, Mrs. Erlton?"

She shook her head, smiling, being accustomed by this time to his unsparing, rather reckless ridicule.

"He looked up and said, 'All this fuss about a little bit of pork.' So all this fuss has taught you the price of eggs. Upon my word! it is worse than the convalescent home!" He lay back upon his pillows with a half-irritated weariness.

"I have learned more than that, surely——" she began.

"Learned!" he echoed sharply. "You've learned everything, my dear lady, necessary to salvation. That's the worst of it! Your chatter to Tara—I hear when you think I am asleep. You draw your veil over your face when the water-carrier comes to fill the pots as if you had been born on a housetop. You—Mrs. Erlton! If I were not a helpless idiot I could pass you out of the city to-morrow, I believe. It isn't your fault any longer. It's mine, and Heaven only knows how long. Oh! confound that thrumming and drumming. It gets on my nerves—my nerves!—pshaw!"

It was then that Kate declared that she would really send Tara——

"Mrs. Erlton presents her compliments to the Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, and will be obliged," jested Jim Douglas; then paused, in truth more irritated than amused, despite the humor on his face. And suddenly he appealed to her almost pitifully, "Mrs. Erlton! if anyone had told you it would be like this—your chance and mine—when the world outside us was alive—was struggling for life—would you—would you have believed it?"

She bent to push the chicken tea to a securer position. "No," she said softly; then to change the subject, added, "How white your hands are getting again! I must put some more stain on them, I suppose." She spoke regretfully, though she did not mind putting it on her own. But he looked at the whiteness with distinct distaste.

"It is with doing nothing and lying like a log. Well! I suppose I shall wake from the dream some day, and then the moment I can walk——"

"There will be an end of peace," she interrupted, quite resolutely. "I know it is very hard for you to lie still, but really you must see how much safer and smoother life has been since you were forced to give in to Fate."

"And Kate," he muttered crossly under his breath. But she heard it, and bit her lip to prevent a tender smile as she went off to give an order to Tara. For the vein of almost boyish mischief and lighthearted recklessness which showed in him at times always made her think how charming he must have been before the cloud shadowed his life.

"The master is much better to-day, Tara," she said cheerfully. "I really think the fever has gone for good."

"Then he will soon be able to take the mem away," replied the woman quickly.

"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?" asked Kate with a smile, for she had grown fond of the tall, stately creature, with her solemn airs of duty, and absolute disregard of anything which came in its way. The intensity of the emotion which swept over the face, which was usually calm as a bronze statue, startled Kate.

"Of a truth I shall be glad to go back. The Huzoors' life is not my life, their death not my death."

It was as if the woman's whole nature had recoiled, as one might recoil from a snake in the path, and a chill struck Kate Erlton's heart, as she realized on how frail a foundation peace and security rested. A look, a word, might bring death. It seemed to her incredible that she should have forgotten this, but she had. She had almost forgotten that they were living in a beleagured city, though the reverberating roll of artillery, the rush and roar of shells, and the crackle of musketry never ceased for more than a few hours at a time.

She was not alone, however, in her forgetfulness. Half Delhi had become accustomed to cannon, to bugles and fifes, and went on its daily round indifferently. But in the Palace the dream grew ominously thin once or twice. For not a fraction remained in the Treasury, no effort to collect revenue had been made anywhere, and fat Mahboob, the only man who knew how to screw money out of a stone, lay dying of dropsy. And as he lay, the mists of personal interest in the future dispersing, he told his old master, the King, some home truths privately, while Ahsan-Oolah, the physician, administering cooling draughts as usual, added his wisdom to the eunuch's. There was no hope where there was no money. Life was not worth living without a regular pension. Let the King secure his and secure pardon while there was yet time, by sending a letter to the General on the Ridge, and offering to let the English in by Selimgarh and betray the city. When all was said and done, others had betrayed him, had forced his hand; so let him save himself if he could, quietly, without a word to any but Ahsan-Oolah. Above all, not one word to Zeenut Maihl, Hussan Askuri, and Bukht Khân—that Trinity of Dreams!

With which words of wisdom mayhap lightening his load of sins, the fat eunuch left the court once and for all. So the old King, as he sat listening to the quarrels of his Commander-in-Chief, had other consolation besides couplets; and when he wrote

he knew—though his yellow, wax-like mask hid the knowledge from all—that a chance of escape remained.

The old King's letter reached the Ridge easily. There was no difficulty in communication now. Spies were plentiful, and if Jim Douglas had been able to get about, he could have set Major Erlton's mind at rest without delay. But Soma positively refused to be a go-between; to do anything, in short, save secure the master's safety. And the offer of betrayal arrived when the man who held command of the Ridge felt uncertain of the future; all the more so because of the telegrams, the letters—almost the orders—which came pouring in to take Delhi—to take it at once! Early in the month, the gamester's throw of assault had been revived with the arrival of reinforcements, only to be abandoned once more, within an hour of the appointed time, in favor of the grip-of-death. But now, though the whisper had gone no further than the General's tent, a third possibility was allowed—retreat. The six thousand were dwindling day by day, the men were half dead with picket duty, wearied out with needless skirmishes, crushed by the tyranny of bugles and fifes.

If this then could be? There was no lack of desire to believe it possible; but Greathed of the politicals, and Sir Theophilus Metcalfe shook their heads doubtfully. Hodson, they said, had better be consulted. So the tall man with the blue hawk's eyes, who had lost his temper many times since that dawn of the 12th of June, when the first assault had hung fire, was asked for his opinion.

"We had a chance at the beginning," he said. "We could have a chance now, if there was someone—but that is beside the question. As for this, it is not worth the paper it is written on. The King has no power to fulfill his promise. He is virtually a prisoner himself. That is the truth. But don't send an answer. Refer it, and keep him quiet."

"And retreat?"

"Retreat is impossible, sir. It would lose us India."

"Any news, Hodson?" asked Major Erlton, meeting the free-lance as he rode back to his tent after his fashion, with loose rein and loose seat, unkempt, undeviating, with an eye for any and every advantage.

"None."

"Any chance of—of anything?"

"None with our present chiefs. If we had Sir Henry Lawrence here it would be different."

But Sir Henry Lawrence, having done his duty to the uttermost, already lay dead in the residency at Lucknow, though the tidings had not reached the Ridge. And yet more direful tidings were on their way to bring July, that month of clouds and cholera, of flies and funerals, of endless buglings and fifings, to a close.

It came to the city first. Came one afternoon when the King sat in the private Hall of Audience, his back toward the arcaded view of the eastern plains, ablaze with sunlight, his face toward the garden, which, through the marble-mosaic traced arches, showed like an embroidered curtain of green set with jeweled flowers. Above him, on the roof, circled the boastful legend:

And all around him, in due order of precedence, according to the latest army lists procurable in Delhi, were ranged the mutinous native officers; for half the King's sovereignty showed itself in punctilious etiquette. At his feet, below the peacock throne, stood a gilded cage containing a cockatoo. For Hâfzan had been so far right in her estimate of Hussan Askuri's wonders that poor little Sonny's pet, duly caught, and with its crest dyed an orthodox green, had been used—like the stuffed lizard—to play on the old man's love of the marvelous. So, for the time being, the bird followed him in his brief journeyings from Audience Hall to balcony, from balcony to bed.

The usual pile of brocaded bags lay below that again, upon the marble floor, where a reader crouched, sampling the most loyal to be used as a sedative. One would be needed ere long, for the Commanders-in-Chief were at war; Bukht Khân, backed by Hussan Askuri, with his long black robe, his white beard, and the wild eyes beneath his bushy brows, and by all the puritans and fanatics of the city; Mirza Moghul by his brother, Khair Sultân, and most of the Northern Indian rebels who refused a mere ex-soubadar's right to be better than they.

"Let the Light-of-the-World choose between us," came the sonorous voice almost indifferently; in truth those secret counsels of Bukht Khân with the Queen, of which the Palace was big with gossip, held small place, allowed small consideration for the puppet King.

"Yea! let the Pillar-of-State choose," bawled the shrill voice of the Moghul, whose yellow, small-featured face was ablaze with passion. "Choose between his son and heir and this low-born upstart, this soubadar of artillery, this puritan by profession, this debaucher of King's——"

He paused, for Bukht Khân's hand was on his sword, and there was an ominous stir behind Hussan Askuri. Ahsan-Oolah, a discreet figure in black standing by the side of the throne, craned his long neck forward, and his crafty face wore an amused smile.

Bukht Khân laughed disdainfully at the Mirza's full stop. "What I am, sire, matters little if I can lead armies to victory. The Mirza hath not led his, as yet."

"Not led them?" interrupted an officious peace-bringer. "Lo! the hell-doomed are reduced to five hundred; the colonels are eating their horses' grain, the captains are starving, and our shells cause terror as they cry, 'Coffin! Coffin! (boccus! boccus!)——'"

"The Mirza could do as well as thou," put in a partisan, heedless of the tales to which the King, however, had been nodding his head, "if, as thou hast, he had money to pay his troops. The Begum Zeenut Maihl's hoards——"

The sword and the hand kept company again significantly. "I pay my men by the hoard I took from the infidel, Meean-jee," retorted the loud, indifferent voice. "And when it is done I can get more. The Palace is not sucked dry yet, nor Delhi either."

The Meean, well known to have feathered his nest bravely, muttered something inaudible, but a stout, white-robed gentleman bleated hastily:

"There is no more money to be loaned in Delhi, be the interest ever so high."

The broad face broadened with a sardonic smile. "I borrow, banker-jee, according to the tenets of the faith, without interest! For the rest, five minutes in thy house with a spade and a string bed to hang thee on head down, and I pay every fighter for the faith in Delhi his arrears."

"Wâh! Wâh!" A fierce murmur of approval ran round the audience, for all liked that way of dealing with folk who kept their money to themselves.

"But, Khân-jee! there is no such hurry," protested the keeper of peace, the promoter of dreams. "The hell-doomed are at the last gasp. Have not two Commanders-in-Chief had to commit suicide before their troops? And was not the third allowed by special favor of the Queen to go away and do it privately? This one will have to do it also, and then——"

"And a letter has but this day come in," said a grave, clever-looking man, interrupting the tale once more, "offering ten lakhs; but as the writer makes stipulations, we are asking what treasury he means to loot, or if it is hidden hoards."

Bukht Khân shrugged his shoulders. "The Meean's or the banker's hoards are nearer," he said brutally, "and money we must have, if we are to fight as soldiers. Otherwise——" He paused. There was a stir at the entrance, where a news-runner had unceremoniously pushed his way in to flourish a letter in a long envelope, and pant with vehement show of breathlessness. "In haste! In haste! and buksheesh for the bringer."

The King, who had been listening wearily to the dispute, thinking possibly that the paucity of commanders on the Ridge was preferable to the plethora of them at court, looked up indifferently. They came so often, these bearers of wonderful news. Not so often as the little brocaded bags; but they had no more effect.

"Reward him, Keeper-of-the-Purse," he said punctiliously, "and read, slave. It is some victory to our troops, no doubt."

There was a pause, during which people waited indifferently, wondering, some of them, if it was bogus news that was to come or not.

Then the court moonshee stood up with a doubtful face. "'Tis from Cawnpore," he murmured, forgetting decorum and etiquette; forgetting everything save the news that the Nâna of Bithoor had killed the two hundred women and children he had pledged himself to save.

Bukht Khân's hand went to his sword once more, as he listened, and he turned hastily to Hussan Askuri. "That settles it as thou wouldst have it," he whispered. "It is Holy War indeed, or defeat."

But Mirza Moghul shrank as a man shrinks from the scaffold.

The old King stood up quickly; stood up between the lights looking out on the curtain of flowers. "Whatever happens," he said tremulously, "happens by the will of God."

His sanctimoniousness never failed him.

So on the night of the 23d of August there was an unwonted stillness in the city, and the coming of day did not break it. The rain, it is true, fell in torrents, but many an attack had been made in rain before. There was none now. The bugles and fifes had ended, and folk were waiting for the drum ecclesiastic to begin. What they thought meanwhile, who knows? Delhi held a hundred and fifty thousand souls, swelled to nigh two hundred thousand by soldiers. Only this, therefore, is certain, the thoughts must have been diverse.

But on the Ridge, when, after a few days, the tidings reached it with certainty, there was but one. It found expression in a letter which the General wrote on the last day of July. "It is my firm intention to hold my present position and resist attack to the last. The enemy are very numerous, and may possibly break through our intrenchments and overwhelm us, but the force will die at its post."

No talk of retirement now! The millions of peasants plowing their land peaceably in firm faith of a just master who would take no more than his due, the thousands even in the bloody city itself waiting for this tyranny to pass, were not to be deserted. The fight would go on. The fight for law and order.

So the sanctimonious old King had said sooth, "Whatever happens, happens by the will of God."

Those two hundred had not died in vain.

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