Having sent off another party along the mountain-track to Chunabatti, I fell out the detachment and entered the orderly-room to hold an inquiry into the case. The story of the crime was soon told. In the barrack-room there were thirty-three beds, all occupied except the one exactly opposite Shaikh Bakur's. This belonged to the missing sentry, Farid Khan, who was on guard for the night. The men had been awakened by the deafening report of a rifle fired in the room. Although, when they had gone to sleep, the big wall-lanterns had been extinguished and the room was in darkness, there was now a small lamp burning beside Farid Khan's bed. By its light some of the sepoys saw a figure rush out through the open door and heard the clatter of heavy nailed boots on the stone-paved veranda outside. The colour-havildar had shrieked out: "I am shot! I am shot!" Suddenly the small lamp was extinguished; and the darkness increased the confusion of the room. The men nearest Shaikh Bakur rushed to his bedside, others called out to him to ask what was the matter; some cried out for the lamps to be lit; and others, not realising what had happened, shouted inquiries. At last a lantern was lighted and revealed the unfortunate man writhing in agony on his bed. Meanwhile the sentry on the quarter guard not fifty yards away, hearing the shot and the consequent uproar, awoke the havildar in charge of the guard. He ordered the bugler to sound the "alarm." The guard having fallen in, the _naik_ (or corporal) went to the magazine close by and found that the sentry over it, whom he had visited fifteen minutes before, was missing from his post. On the "alarm" being sounded, the sepoys rushed out of their barrack-rooms with their rifles and accoutrements and fell in on parade. Still the magazine sentry did not appear, and his absence aroused suspicion. It was remembered that he was a young Mussulman called Farid Khan whom I had checked on parade that morning for carelessness in drill and who had been previously reprimanded by Shaikh Bakur for not having his accoutrements clean. I discovered that the small lamp, which had been burning when the shot was fired and the murderer ran out of the room, had been put out by a young sepoy who slept in the next cot to Farid Khan's, apparently to help the assassin to escape in the darkness. This sepoy came from the same district as the missing sentry and was his intimate friend. I made him a prisoner.