Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one in the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife, sword, or spear,--thrust at Trejago in his _boorka_. The stroke missed his body, but cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly from the wound for the rest of his days. The grating went into its place. There was no sign whatever from inside the house,--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and the blackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind. The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his _boorka_ and went home bareheaded. * * * * * What was the tragedy--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa--Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had happened, and the thought of what it must have been, comes upon Trejago in the night now and again, and keeps him company till the morning. One special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies the front of Durga Charan's house. It may open on to a courtyard common to two or more houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of Jitha Megji's _bustee_. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa--poor little Bisesa--back again. He has lost her in the City where each man's house is as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up. But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort of man. There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, caused by a riding-strain, in the right leg. THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE Hit a man an' help a woman, an' ye can't be far wrong anyways.--_Maxims of Private Mulvaney._ The Inexpressibles gave a ball. They borrowed a seven-pounder from the Gunners, and wreathed it with laurels, and made the dancing-floor plate-glass and provided a supper, the like of which had never been eaten before, and set two sentries at the door of the room to hold the trays of programme-cards. My friend, Private Mulvaney, was one of the sentries, because he was the tallest man in the regiment. When the dance was fairly started the sentries were released, and Private Mulvaney went to curry favor with the Mess Sergeant in charge of the supper. Whether the Mess Sergeant gave or Mulvaney took, I cannot say. All that I am certain of is that, at supper-time, I found Mulvaney with Private Ortheris, two-thirds of a ham, a loaf of bread, half a _pâté-de-foie-gras_, and two magnums of champagne, sitting on the roof of my carriage. As I came up I heard him saying--