“Is it over?” asked Eirene. Wylie hesitated.
“Well,” he said, “I believe they are taking the night to think about it. But, after all, what can they do? It wouldn’t be to their interest to treat any of us badly, you know. They might refuse to accept my parole and tie my hands again, but they haven’t, so far. So let us be cheerful.”
CHAPTER IX.
ONE TOO MANY.
“Oh, I say! It can’t be time to get up yet,” groaned Maurice, rolling over resentfully on his couch of pine-needles as a hand was laid on his shoulder. But the hand shook him slightly, and Wylie’s voice said, “Wake up, and don’t make a row.”
Throwing off the rug, Maurice sat up, blinking in the grey light of dawn. He and Wylie had chosen their sleeping-places in front of the hut, so that the girls might know they were at hand in case of an alarm in the night; but Wylie was now beckoning him away from it. On the other side of the ashes where the fire had been stood the brigands in a row, grim and silent, with their rifles ready. Maurice stared.
“What’s up?” he asked in bewilderment.
“We desire not so moch to guard,” responded Milosch. “You too many for us. Ze women are precious, and zere most be one man for to attend upon zem. Ze ozer most go. We make you draw ze lot.”
“All right, all right! but you needn’t do it where the ladies can hear you,” said Wylie impatiently. “Come along, Smith.” Wide awake by this time, Maurice rose, and they followed the brigands into the wood, Wylie grasping Maurice’s arm to draw him out of earshot of Milosch. “Look here,” he said. “If the lot falls upon you, of course I’ll take it, for your sisters can’t do without you, but I’m pretty certain it’s only a trick to get rid of me. They’ve been planning this all night.”
“But you don’t think they’d dare—to kill you?”
“Why not? They killed Haji Ahmad without compunction. Their lives are forfeit already, you see, and so long as your sisters are alive, they know that no Government will dare to hunt them down.”