"That accounts for your starting back again at once," Mr. Fullarton said with a smile as he touched a bell.
Percy's old friend, Ram Singh, entered. "Get some food directly, Ram Singh. This is Mr. Groves, your old pupil on the voyage."
The man salaamed. "I am glad to see you, sahib. You have grown since then."
"So I ought to have done." Percy laughed. "I was not fifteen when I landed here. That is more than four years ago. I owe a great deal, Ram Singh, to the lessons I had from you."
"I don't think, Mr. Fullarton," he went on when the man retired to get some food, "that hunger had much to do with my coming over to-night. I was very anxious about my two men, they are the same two I had with me when I came to you at Loodiana. They have been with me ever since, and I would not on any account that harm should come to them."
He then related the instructions he had given them as to joining him if they made their escape.
"It is quite possible that they may be in the camp now," Mr. Fullarton said. "I know that a few prisoners were taken by the 9th Lancers, who were the first to cross the ford. When they went on to join Thackwell they handed over their prisoners to one of the other corps. We have all been too busy to-day to think about them, but the first thing in the morning I will go with you and see if your men are among them. It is too late to do it to-night. Now tell me all about your sojourn with Sher Singh, and how you managed to escape from the Sikhs."
The next morning early Mr. Fullarton went out with Percy, and found that the prisoners taken by the cavalry who had first crossed had been handed over to the charge of the 14th Dragoons, and at once went over to the camp of that regiment. Mr. Fullarton was well known to the officer in command of the corps, who on learning from him the object of his visit at once ordered the prisoners to be paraded.
"There are ten of them, I think," he said. "I have not questioned them; I thought some of you political gentlemen would want to do that, and all I had to do was to take care of them."
He walked across with them to the guard-tent, from which the prisoners were just being brought out. Percy gave an exclamation of satisfaction as, in the last two who came out, he recognized his followers. They on their part would have run forward, but the habits of discipline prevailed, and giving the military salute they fell in with the others.