Sudden cessation of movement roused her; and the mate, turning his head, spoke with respectful urgency.
"Protector of the Poor, it is not well to go farther. Behold the swift going of the sun. Before your servants can reach the bungalow there will be no more light, and it is against orders——The Sahib will make angry talk."
Evelyn did not follow the whole of this appeal; but the man's anxiety was evident. She caught the words "Sahib" and "angry" with an inward shudder; she had endured enough of the Sahib's anger for one day, and her own common-sense told her that she had behaved foolishly.
Even outlying bungalows were no longer in sight. A boundary pillar gleamed ghostlike a few hundred yards ahead. The last rim of the sun had already slipped behind the hills. Their harsh peaks black against a sky of faint amber, had a threatening look; and darkness was racing up out of the east. The mate was right. It would be upon them almost before they could reach the bungalow; and to be out after sunset was strictly against the rules of the station.
Sudden terror clutched her; a nameless dread of the country—of the natives—which she had never been able to shake off; a paralysing sense that she was alone in their midst—alone on the verge of night.
Fear unsteadied her voice as she answered the man. "Turn, turn at once, and go quickly,—run; the Sahib will give jacksheesh—run!"
But before they could obey, a white figure sprang up from behind a cluster of rocks. Quick as thought followed a flash, a report, a heart-piercing scream; and the men, with a cry of "Ghazi! Ghazi!" unceremoniously set down their mistress and fled.
The fanatic fled also, certain of a passport into Paradise; and as Evelyn Desmond fell back among her cushions, a shadow, that had not been there before, crept slowly across the shoulder of her muslin dress. The oncoming darkness mattered nothing to her now; and she herself, a mere atom of life, blown out like a candle, mattered less than nothing to the desert and the imperturbable hills.
But justice does not invariably tarry. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, though in these days of omniscience man has a larger faith in his own; and the Ghazi, heading post-haste through the dusk plunged unwittingly into a group of villagers and cattle returning home.