"If you don't keep quiet, Jones, I'll send you back to Meerut. And you too, Maloney. I've told you to lie still a dozen times."
"Sure, Docther dear, ye couldn't be so cruel," said a big Irishman sitting at the foot of his bed so as to get nearer to a new arrival who was telling the tale of the fight. "And me able-bodied and spoiling to be at me wurrk this three days."
"It's a curious fact," remarked the Doctor to Jim Douglas as he finished bandaging him, "the hospital has been twice as insubordinate since Nicholson came in. The men seem to think we are to assault Delhi tomorrow. But we can't till the siege train comes, of course. So you may be in at the death!"
Jim Douglas felt glad and sorry in a breath.
Finally he told himself he could let decision stand over for a day or two. He must see Hodson first, and find out if the letter he had had from his spies about an Englishwoman, concealed in Delhi, referred to Kate Erlton.
[CHAPTER II.]
BITS, BRIDLES, SPURS.
The letter, however, did not refer to Kate; though, curiously enough, the Englishwoman it concerned had been, and still was concealed in an Afghan's house. Kate, then, had not been the only Englishwoman in Delhi. There was a certain consolation in the thought, since what was being done for one person by kindly natives might very well be done for another. Besides, removed as he was now from the fret and strain of actual search, Jim Douglas admitted frankly to Major Hodson that he was right in saying that Mrs. Erlton must either have come to an end of her troubles altogether, or have found friends better able, perhaps, than he to protect her.
Regarding the first possibility also Major Hodson was skeptical. He had hundreds of spies in the city. Such a piece of good luck as the discovery of a Christian must have been noised abroad. They had not mentioned it; he did not, therefore, believe it had occurred. He would, however, inquire, and till the answer came it would be foolish to go back to the city. Jim Douglas admitted this also; but as the days passed, the desire to return increased; especially when Major Erlton came to see him, which he did with dutiful regularity. Jim Douglas could not help admiring him when he stood, stiff and square, thanking him as Englishmen thank their fellows for what they know to be beyond thanks.
"I am sure no one could have done more, and I know I couldn't have done a quarter so much; and I'm grateful," he said awkwardly. Then with the best intentions, born from a real pity for the haggard man who sat on the edge of his cot looking as men do after a struggle of weeks with malarial fever, he added, "And the luck has been a bit against you all the time, hasn't it?"