"Saba do more good here," the old nurse said, and seated herself quietly in the veranda.
It was but twenty yards to the bushes they had marked as the place of concealment; and as they entered and crouched down there came the sound of hurrying feet, and a band of Sepoys, led by one of the jemadars, or native officers, rushed up to the veranda from the back.
"Now," the jemadar shouted, "search the house; kill the boys, but keep the white women; they are too pretty to hurt."
Two minutes' search—in which furniture was upset, curtains pulled down, and chests ransacked—and a shout of rage proclaimed that the house was empty.
The jemadar shouted to his men: "Search the compound; they can't be far off; some of you run out to the plain; they can't have got a hundred yards away; besides, our guards out there will catch them."
The old nurse rose to her feet just as the Sepoys were rushing out on the search.
"It is of no use searching," she said; "they have been gone an hour."
"Gone an hour!" shouted the enraged jemadar; "who told them of the attack?"
"I told them," Saba said steadily; "Saba was true to her salt."
There was a yell of rage on the part of the mutineers, and half a dozen bayonets darted into the faithful old servant's body, and without a word she fell dead on the veranda, a victim to her noble fidelity to the children she had nursed.