We sat in silence, but our attention was soon arrested by the figure of a man dragging along a girl, who resisted to the utmost of her power, but who was evidently nearly exhausted, I rushed forward to her rescue, and my eyes fell on the person of Ghuffoor Khan, his savage features exaggerated in their ferocious expression by lust and the scene he had been engaged in. "Ha!" cried he, "Meer Sahib, is that you? here have I been working like a true Pindharee, and have brought off something worth having; look at her, man! is she not a Peri? a Hoori? The fool, her mother, must needs oppose me when I got into their house, but I silenced her with a thrust of my sword, and lo! here is her fair daughter, a worthy mate for a prince. Speak, my pretty one, art not thou honoured at the prospect of the embraces of Ghuffoor Khan?" By Alla! Sahib, I could have killed him, and it would have been an easy matter to have done so, as he stood unprepared. I had half drawn my sword from its scabbard, but I returned it: I made an inward determination as to his fate, and I kept it. I vainly endeavoured to induce him to give up the girl and let her go, but he laughed in my face, and dragged her off. She would fain have fled from him, and attempted to do so, but he pursued and caught her, for her tender feet were cut by the rough ground, and I lost sight of them both in the quickly closing darkness. Miserable girl! she was a Brahmin's daughter, and was spared the degradation of seeing the light of another day, and the misery of returning to her desolate home polluted and an outcast. Ghuffoor Khan told me in the morning, with a hellish laugh, that he had murdered her, as she tried to possess herself of his dagger, to plunge it into her own heart. "I spared her the trouble," he said. Gradually the fire lessened in its fury, as there remained but few houses unconsumed, but the Pindharees were still at their wild and horrible work, as the shrieks borne to us on the night wind too well testified. I had heard that these excesses were sometimes committed, but I had formed no idea of the terrible reality. A thousand times I formed the resolution to quit the Lubhur and return to my home; but again the thought that a few straggling horsemen, who could give no proper account of themselves, would be immediately taken for Pindharees, and sacrificed by the now infuriated people of the country,--this, and, I must add, a restless desire for further adventures, caused me to dismiss it from my mind. It began to rain too, and we all huddled together in my little tent, and passed a weary night, till the morning broke. Then we were again in motion, and the ill-fated town of Karinjah, now a heap of smouldering ruins, was soon far behind us.