"Allah be with the brave!" muttered one or two of the men, as Philip Marsden turned once more to enter the courtyard. It lay blazing in the sunshine, open and empty; but what of the dim archway tunnelling a row of buildings into that smaller yard beyond, where Afzul Khân waited with murder in his heart, and his finger on the trigger of his rifle? There the Englishman would need all his nerve. It was a rash attempt he was making; he knew that right well, but he had resolved to attempt it if ever he got the opportunity. Anything, he had told himself, was better than the wild-beast-like scuffle he had witnessed not long before; a hopeless, insane struggle ending in death to three brave men, one of them the best soldier in the regiment. The remembrance of the horrible scene was strong on him as his spurs clicked an even measure across the court.
It was cooler in the shadow, quite a relief after the glare. Ah!... just as he had imagined! In the far corner a crouching figure and a glint of light on the barrel of a rifle. No pause; straight on into the sunlight again; then suddenly the word of command rang through the court boldly. "Lay down your arms!"
The familiar sound died away into silence. It was courage against power, and a life hung on the balance. Then the long gleam of light on the rifle wavered, disappeared, as Private Afzul Khân stood up and saluted. "You are a braver man than I, sahib," he said. That was all.
A sort of awed whisper of relief and amazement ran through the crowd as Philip Marsden came out with his prisoner, and gave orders for the men to fall in. Two Englishmen in mufti had ridden up in time for the final tableau; and one of them, nodding his head to the retreating soldiers, said approvingly, "That is what gave, and keeps us India."
"And that," returned John Raby pointing to Shunker Dâs who with renewed arrogance was driving off, "will make us lose it."
"My dear Raby! I thought the moneyed classes--"
"My dear Smith! if you think that when the struggle comes, as come it must, our new nobility, whose patent is plunder, will fight our battles against the old, I don't."
They argued the point all the way home without convincing each other, while Time with the truth hidden in his wallet passed on towards the Future.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Had any one, a week before his daughter arrived, told Colonel Stuart that her presence would be a pleasant restraint upon him, he would have been very angry. Yet such was the fact. Her likeness to her mother carried him back to days when his peccadilloes could still be regarded as youthful follies, and people spared a harsh verdict on what age might be expected to remedy. Then her vast admiration gave a reality to his own assumptions of rectitude; for the Colonel clung theoretically to virtue with great tenacity, in a loud-voiced, conservative "d---- you if you don't believe what I say" sort of manner. He also maintained a high ideal in regard to the honour of every one else, based on a weak-kneed conviction that his own was above suspicion.