rushed to the parched lungs. With a wrench his brain cleared, and he
went down; but now with power in his arms, the arms that still clung
about the dazed Hunsa, and he was on top.

Scarce aware of the action, out of a fighting instinct, he dragged from
its holster his heavy pistol, and beat with its butt the ugly head
beneath, beat it till it was still. Then he staggered to his feet and
looked wonderingly at the form of the Bagree behind who lay sprawled on
the road, a great red splash across the white jacket on his breast.

In the Gulab's hand was still clutched the dagger she had drawn from
her girdle and driven home to save the sahib who had sat like a god in
her heart. With the other hand she held out from contact with her
limbs the muslin _sari_ that was crimsoned where the blood of the
Bagree had fountained when she drew forth her knife.

Barlow darted forward as Bootea reeled and caught her with an arm.
Close, the face, fair as that of a memsahib in the pallor of fright and
the paling moonlight, sweet, of finer mould, more spiritual than the
Mona Lisa's, puritanically simple, the mass of black hair drawn
straight back from the low broad brow--for the rich turban had fallen
in her fight for freedom--woke memory in the sahib; and as the blood
ebbed back through the girl's veins, the pale cheeks flushed with rose,
her eyelids quivered and drew back their shutters from eyes that were
like those of an antelope.

"You--you, Gulab, the giver of the red rose, the singer of the love
song!" Barlow gasped.

"Yes, Captain Sahib, you who are like a god--" Bootea checked, her head