“Can I see him?” asked my brother, knitting his brows, and clenching his hands together till the nails entered his skin. “Don’t laugh, Prabu, again, for I am serious, and feel as likely to run a muck as one of your own countrymen.”
“Let the Sahib Martin be patient till to-morrow, and perhaps he may see this man about the palace gardens,” replied Prabu. “But why dost thou so desire to meet this poor wretch?”
“Because,” replied my brother, “I shall then know whether he be the villain who robbed us of our cousin—nay, who perhaps hath murdered her.”
“Pray Allah it may prove so, Sahib Martin,” replied Prabu, also playing with the haft of his creese, and, rarely for him except under the greatest excitement, something of the ferocity of his race in his eyes, “for we will tear the whole truth from his heart.”
“Prabu,” cried my brother, starting from his seat, and taking our companion by the hand, “thank you—thank you for that speech;” then sitting down again, he murmured, as tears ran down his cheeks—
“Poor dear Marie!”
“Poor dear young sahib!” said Prabu, deeply affected at my brother’s anguish, “weep not, dear boy” (this was the first time he had used such a familiar phrase); “for be assured, if still upon earth, we will find her; if—” but he could not utter the word as he caught the expression upon Martin’s face—“she shall be avenged.”
Need I say that our dreams that night were of
THE WEN-NECKED HUNCHBACK?