didn't do his duty!"

He had hardly said that when the Rajput came spurring and thundering
along from the rear. He seemed in no hurry to follow farther, but
drew rein between us and saluted with the semi-military gesture with
which he favored all who, unlike Monty, had not been Colonels of
Indian regiments.

"I tracked Umm Kulsum through the dark!" he announced, rubbing the
burned nodules out of his singed beard and then patting his mare's
neck. "I saw her ride away alone an hour before you reached that
fork in the road and turned up this watercourse. 'By the teeth of
God,' said I, 'when a good-looking woman leaves a party of men to
canter alone in the dark, there is treason!' and I followed."

I offered the Rajput my cigarette case, and to my surprise he accepted
one, although not without visible compunction. As a Muhammadan by
creed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by European
touch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions.
A hundred yards ahead of us Maga was talking and gesticulating furiously,
evidently railing at Kagig's wooden-headedness or unbelief. Monty
sat listening, saying nothing.

"What did you see, Rustum Khan?" asked Fred.

"At first very little. My eyes are good, but that gipsy-woman's
are better, and I was kept busy following her; for I could not keep
close, or she might have heard. The noise of her own clumsy stallion
prevented her from hearing the lighter footfalls of my mare, and
by that I made sure she was not expecting to meet an enemy. 'She