taking up your residence in Cawnpore, and sending in all your retainers to
join in the attack on the English."

The ranee looked sad.

"They say there are hundreds of women and little children there," she
said, "and that the English who are defending them are few."

"It is so," Ahrab said. "But they are brave. The men of the Nana, and the
old regiments, are fifty to one against them, and the cannon fire night
and day, and yet they do not give way a foot."

"They are men, the English sahibs."

While they were speaking the two chief personages of the party had taken
their seats in a pavilion close to the spot where the young Warreners were
hidden.

Ned translated the purport of the talk to Dick, and both agreed that the
way of safety had opened to them.

Seeing that their mistress was not in the humor for laughter and mirth,
and would rather talk quietly with her chief friend and adviser, the
attendants gradually left them, and gathered in a distant part of the
garden.

Then Ned and Dick crept out of their hiding-place, and appeared suddenly
at the entrance to the pavilion, where they fell on one knee, in an
attitude of supplication, and Ned said: