“Though you pretend that they loved him?” Ted bitterly demanded.
“The better reason for slaying him. They would kill him first of all, because they loved and honoured him, so that he might never know their shame. Yet I cannot believe it. May my father’s grave be defiled if I do not kill some of the traitors before I die!”
Ted walked to the window and gazed forth upon the distant hubbub. Paterson followed, and laid his hand upon the shoulder of his chum.
“It will be worse for the poor lassie, I’m thinking, Ted,” he said.
Our hero nodded, but could not trust himself to speak.
“We must keep the news from her as long as we can,” Alec continued. “She is with her father now, and has not heard. The others will not tell her.”
CHAPTER XI
In the Clutches of Pir Baksh
Three hours after Ensign Russell and Havildar Ambar Singh had entered the besieged house, a swarthy man in the uniform of a native officer picked himself tenderly up from the ground, and wondered to find himself still alive. It was Pir Baksh the subadar. For hours he had lain unconscious, deaf to the moans of the maimed and dying men who lay stretched on every side amid the chaos of shattered timber and masonry.