“No one shall know that I have stolen away,” he mused. “Forever and in the night.” A light foot pressed the floor as the expected one glided over the low window sill. There was a night lamp burning dimly in a shaded corner. “Put out the light. I must tell you something. We are both watched and spied on!” whispered a well-known voice. As Hugh Johnstone turned from the corner, in the darkness, there was a gurgling cry--a half-smothered groan--as Mirzah Shah’s poisoned dagger was driven to the hilt between his shoulders. His accounts were settled, at last! An hour later, a dark form crept through the gardens toward the gate where Harry Hardwicke had rode in to the rescue. There was a silent struggle as two men wrestled in the darkness, and one fled away into the shadows of the night. It was the chance meeting of a spy and a murderer. And then Major Alan Hawke stooped and picked up a heavy dagger lying at his feet. “I have the beggar’s knife,” he growled. And, with a sudden intention, he vanished toward the Club, for the knife of Mirzah Shah was reeking, and Hugh Johnstone had gone out on his darkened path alone. He had left Delhi--forever. BOOK III. PRINCE DJIDDIN’S VISIT TO ENGLAND. CHAPTER XI. “DO YOU SEE THIS DAGGER?” Morning in Delhi! The fiery sun leaped up, gilding once more the far Himalayas and lighting the bloodstained plains of Oude. The golden shafts twinkled on the huge colonnade, the vast ruined arch, the crumbling walls, and the huge castled oval of Humayoon’s tomb. In the dark night, the monsoon winds wailed over the wreck of Hindu, Pathan, and Mogul magnificence. The dark demons of Bowanee rejoiced at a new sacrifice to the gloomy goddess; and the straggling jungle was alive again. In the vacant caverns, whence the sons of Mohammed Bahadur were once dragged forth to die by daring Hodson’s smoking pistols, their slaughtered shades grinned over the ghastly vengeance of the barren years. The huge dome of the mosque hung in air over the vacant palaces of the great Moguls, and the far windmill ridge, and the bastioned walls of Delhi were bathed in golden light, while Alan Hawke slept the sleep of exhaustion. And while Ram Lal Singh, secure in his zenana, calmly greeted the cool morning hour with a smiling face and a happy heart, in the lonely marble house, stern old Hugh Fraser Johnstone slept the sleep that knows no waking. The Chandnee Chouk awoke to its busy daily chatter, and old Shahjehanabad sought its pleasures languidly again, or bowed its shoulders once more under the yoke of toil. The faithful sought the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of the Peacock Throne.