'It is time for us to move,' said Bâl Narîn.
Tom looked down regretfully at Grace's sleeping face. 'Couldn't we wait a little?' he said. 'It seems such a pity to disturb her.'
'We will not awake her,' said Bâl Narîn. 'Will his Excellency allow me?'
Tom moved aside while, with a dexterous gentleness which he envied but could not emulate, the clever Ghoorka, who in his youth had served an enforced apprenticeship to a robber tribe in the plains, transferred the sleeping girl from her bed on the ground to her bed on the litter.
Kit, in the meantime, had awoke. He was much stronger, he said, though to Tom his poor little legs looked piteously weak and slender. It was possible for him, however, to walk, and when he was tired Bâl Narîn said he would carry him on his shoulder. Then a match was applied to the touchwood under the hut; Grace, who had only stirred once, was lifted slowly and carefully to the shoulders of her bearers, and, with light hearts, they set out to rejoin the rest of their party on the robbers' road.
The sleep which had fallen upon Grace when she knew that her task was done, lasted for many hours. Passing through the air, resting for brief spells when the shoulder of the rajah, which was unaccustomed to weight-carrying, threatened to give way, taken up again with reverent care, and lifted skilfully over the various obstructions of the way, she neither moved nor spoke. Tom would, now and then, look at her with alarm; but Bâl Narîn smiled.
'The gracious lady is a child of the Supreme Spirit,' he said, 'and this is His sleep which has fallen upon her. When she awakes, Sahib, her trouble will be gone.'
'Grace never slept,' said Kit, who was perched now on Bâl Narîn's unoccupied shoulder, and holding on by his head, 'after Rungya died.'
'How long was that, my little Sahib?' said Bâl Narîn.