off; some of you run out to the plain; they can't have got a hundred yards
away; besides, our guards out there will catch them."

The old nurse rose to her feet just as the Sepoys were rushing out on the
search.

"It is of no use searching," she said; "they have been gone an hour."

"Gone an hour!" shouted the enraged jemadar; "who told them of the
attack?"

"I told them," Saba said steadily; "Saba was true to her salt."

There was a yell of rage on the part of the mutineers, and half a dozen
bayonets darted into the faithful old servant's body, and without a word
she fell dead on the veranda, a victim to her noble fidelity to the
children she had nursed.

"Now," the jemadar said, "strip the place; carry everything off; it is all
to be divided to-morrow, and then we will have a blaze."

Five minutes sufficed to carry off all the portable articles from the
bungalow; the furniture, as useless to the Sepoys, was left, but
everything else was soon cleared away, and then the house was lit in half
a dozen places. The fire ran quickly up the muslin curtains, caught the
dry reeds of the tatties, ran up the bamboos which formed the top of the
veranda, and in five minutes the house was a sheet of flame.