"Jemadar," said he rising, "I have sinned, and my hour is come. I ask not for mercy, for I know too well that it cannot be shown me; let me die by the hands of my own people, and I am content; and if my fate be a warning to them, I am satisfied. I was pure in my honour till I met that slave; she told me that you were to marry her mistress, and that you had told her who you were. I thought it true, and I conversed with her on the secrets of our band; I boasted to her of the deeds we had done, and she consented to be mine whenever we could meet with a fitting opportunity. Fool that I was, I was deceived; yet I offer this as no palliation for my offence. Let therefore Goordut kill me; his is a sure hand, and he will not fail in his duty." Goordut, the chief of our Lughaees, stepped forward. "Forgive me your death," said he to the fated wretch; "I have no enmity against you, but this is my duty, and I must do it." "I forgive you," he replied. "Let your hand be firm; I shall offer no resistance, nor struggle; let my death-pain be short." Goordut looked to me for the signal,--I gave it, and in another instant his victim had expiated his crime by death; he suffered passively, and Goordut's hand never trembled. The body was taken from among us and interred; and henceforward we had no treachery among us, nor did I ever meet with another instance, save one, and that was successful; you shall hear of it hereafter. There but remained to allot to the different members of the band their separate places in the ensuing catastrophe; and this done, I felt that I had acted as a good Thug, and that a misplaced pity had not influenced me during the transactions of the day. Strange was it, Sahib, that Shurfun, knowing who we were, should not, when she had discovered it, at once have fled from us! How she, a woman unused to and unacquainted with deeds of blood, could have borne to look on, nay more to have caressed and loved, one a murderer by profession, whose hand was raised against the whole human race, is more than I have ever been able to understand: I can only say it was her fate. She might, she ought to have avoided me; in every principle of human conduct, her love for me was wicked and without shame, and a virtuous woman would have died before she had ever allowed it to possess her bosom. She might have cast me off when she said she would, and when her resolution was made to see me no more; but her blind passion led her on into the net fate had spread for her, and she was as unable to avoid it, as you or I shall be to die, Sahib, when our hour comes.