A stifled cry burst from the girl.
"Oh, you are safe, thank God!" she cried, her hand at her heart.
"What has happened here?" asked Dermot, entering the room.
Fred let fall the curtain as he answered:
"Hell's broke loose on the garden, sir. The coolies have mutinied. Parry's dead, murdered; and we're alive only by the kind mercies of that brute Chunerbutty, damn him! You were right about him, Major; and I was a fool.... Is it true you've been attacked up in Ranga Duar?" he continued.
"Are you wounded, Major Dermot?" broke in the girl anxiously.
"No, Miss Daleham. I'm quite safe and sound."
Then he told them briefly what had happened. When he had finished he asked them when the trouble began at Malpura.
"Three days ago," replied Fred. "The wind was blowing from the north, and we heard firing up in the mountains. I thought you were having an extra go of musketry there. But the coolies suddenly stopped work and gathered outside their village, where those infernal Brahmins harangued them. I went to order them back to their jobs——".
"Where was Parry?"