As the Ranee thoroughly agreed with Percy the colonel consented to make more rigid rules, although still maintaining his opinion that no precautions of the sort would be of the slightest avail in keeping a determined man from entering the place.
The next morning another horseman came in from Ghoolab.
The colonel laughed as he read the letter he had brought.
"The old fox still hopes to catch you again, Percy; he simply continues negotiations, and asks what guarantee I can offer on my part that I will retire from the fortress if you are, as I demand, given up to me before I surrender. I will put him out of his agony."
So the colonel wrote a short note to the effect that his nephew had returned, and having informed him who was the brigand into whose hands he had fallen, there was no longer any need for any further negotiations on the subject.
"You must be doubly careful now, Roland," the Ranee said when her husband told her what lie had written to Ghoolab. "He has always been your bitter enemy, but he will be more so than ever now. I do beg that you will again have that guard you had during the siege, and that you will have the two men who have proved so faithful to Percy to sleep always at the entrance to our apartments."
"I hate being guarded," the colonel said; "still, if it will make you more comfortable, of course it shall be as you wish."
When the officers of the garrison understood that Ghoolab had again been foiled, there was a general opinion that too great precautions for the colonel's safety could hardly be taken.
The watch at the gate was carried out most vigilantly, for the colonel was so much beloved by his men that each considered himself personally responsible for his safety, and whatever might be the story told by strangers arriving at the gate, they were not allowed to pass until the trader or other person they wished to see was brought down to the gate to vouch for the truth of the statement.
During the next three months seven or eight men whose story proved to be false were seized and imprisoned. The officers were all in favour of applying torture to them to extract the truth, but the colonel would not hear of it.