“Hush!” Mehal answered, clutching his arm and leaning upon him, for she was terribly weak.
Then for the first time, Walter noticed the bandage round the old woman’s head, and that something was the matter. His heart sank within him, for Mehal’s appearance in such a plight augured a disaster—so he thought—that might annihilate his hopes.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked eagerly, as he led the woman to the heap of straw.
“Our plans have miscarried,” she said, as she seated herself with difficulty, and the pain from her wound caused her to utter an involuntary groan.
The strong man staggered as the words were uttered, for it sounded like the death-knell of Flora. In an instant he remembered the promise he had made to Mrs. Harper the night before he had left Meerut. “I will either save Flora, or perish in the attempt.” That promise should be fulfilled one way or the other. He mentally pledged himself again to that.
When he had recovered from the first effects of the startling news, he said—
“But how is it the plans have miscarried? and where is Miss Meredith?”
“I liberated her. She must have been near you.”
Gordon uttered a cry of agony, and pressed his hand to his head, as there flashed through his brain the remembrance of the cry which had startled him in his sleep, and which he believed to be a delusion, but he now knew was a reality. He moaned, fairly moaned, with the unutterable sense of sickness which was at his heart, as he realised that, by some accident, Flora had been near, without discovering him.
“Tell me all,” he said, when he was able to speak.