Maggie evidently found consolation in this limited promise of fidelity. It can only be assumed that the boy kept his vow. In his mind he followed the child and her parents down into the valley, across the river, and up the hill-side to the spacious compound which held the house and offices. Arrived there, in fancy, his active brain roamed about the place, which he knew well. Then his wits wandered. His father, quitting the monthly accounts in time for dinner, found the nurse sitting in the veranda, sewing, in a dim light. Near her was Karl, unusually quiet, curled up in a big peg-chair. Grier spoke, but the boy did not answer. Stooping, he noticed a tiny stream of blood issuing from a nostril. Though not a nervous man, he lifted Karl into his arms with quick anxiety, and the youngster appeared to wake from a light sleep. “What is the matter, sonny?” he asked, somewhat puzzled. “Why is your nose bleeding?” “I don’t know, Daddy, but I have been a long way, and maybe I hurted myself.” “Been a long way! Has Master Karl been out, Mathilde?” he inquired. “Mais non, m’sieur. He play some time, then he sit himself in the chair.” “But I have, Daddy,” persisted the child. “I went with Maggie. I heard Mr. Hutchinson tell Mrs. Hutchinson that their tea crop was not a good one, as the soil was too light, and he thought the Company had not chosen a good pitch.” This was sufficiently bewildering from a boy of six, being an opinion which Hutchinson would not utter even to Grier himself. But Karl, whose lisp need not be reproduced, was brimful of news. “Oh, it is quite, quite true,” he cried in response to his father’s laughing protest. “Maggie went in, and was a naughty girl because she could not sit up for dinner. Then I went around the house, and I saw some hill men in a wood. They said they were going to kill Mr. Hutchinson to-night, and steal his money. One of them will give the _chowkidars_ (watchmen) something to make them sleep. They will put the bags of money on some ponies, and go by a hill path into Sikkim. There are eight brown ponies and one white one. I counted them.” Some inkling of a tremendous fact stayed the remonstrance on Mr. Grier’s lips. He was Scottish, you see, a Highlander bred and born, and he _almost_ believed in second sight. So he encouraged Karl to talk, obtained additional and more convincing details, for the child gave him the exact phrases of the Shillong patois used by the bandits, and finally handed over the youthful visionary to Mathilde, telling her to ask Mrs. Grier to keep some dinner for him--he was called away on urgent business.