"Where are the girls? what has happened? are you hurt?" were the three questions poured out rapidly by Ned, as the boy seized the old man's hands. "Is it you, sahibs? I am glad, indeed. I did not break my promise to come and tell you; but as you see," and he pointed to the bandage which enveloped his head, "I was wounded, and am still ill." "But the girls?" asked Ned. "They have been carried off by the troops of the Rajah of Nahdoor." "How long since?" "Thursday, sahib." "How far off is Nahdoor?" "Ten miles, sahib." Major Warrener now took up the interrogation. "How is the one who was ill?" "She was better, and was getting stronger again when they carried her off." "Do you think they are still at Nahdoor? or that they have been sent into Delhi?" "They are still there," the Hindoo said. "I have sent a man each day to watch, so that directly I got better I might be able to tell you the truth of the matter. My servant has just returned; they had not left at three o'clock, and they would be sure not to start after that hour. The rajah will go with his troops in a few days to pay his respects to the emperor; he will probably take the _mem_ sahibs with him." "Thank God for that," Major Warrener said. "If they have not yet been taken to that horrible den of murder we will save them. I am the father of one, and the other is my niece," he said to the zemindar; "and I owe their lives so far to you. The debt of gratitude I can never pay to you--or to your wife and daughter," he added, turning to the women, who, their first impulse of alarm over, had now, in the presence of friends, uncovered their faces, for it is only the higher class of Hindoo women who closely veil--"for your care in nursing my niece, and for giving them shelter, when to do so was to risk your lives. This debt I can never pay; but the losses you have sustained in the destruction of your house, and the loss of animals, I can happily more than replace. And now tell me how it happened."