“Child bad again!” muttered the Doctor. “Where are they? In my room?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Don’t go away, Archie. Stop and talk to the wife till I come back.”
The Doctor passed out of the room, and Mrs Morley turned to Archie, to say imploringly:
“Have you brought any news?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing—nothing?” she cried, in a tone of voice which made the lad feel almost ready to reproach himself for being alive and well when his companion whom he had taken light-hearted and merry from that very room, so short a time before, was—where?
“Here, Maria—Archie!” came in a sharp tone of voice which made them both start. “Here—quick!”
There was only a little lamp, which gave forth a faint light, upon the table of the Doctor’s surgery and consulting-room, but it threw up the figure of a slight, graceful-looking native woman and a tall, fierce Malay; and, jumping at conclusions, Archie judged by the man’s bandaged head that he had been wounded, and that his companion had brought him to the Doctor for help.