But Maloosray could not sleep, and after a while, got up, and ascending the steps to the roof of the terrace, looked over the plain suspiciously. All, however, was still. To the east, lightning was playing about the tops of the clouds in dim flickering flashes. Everywhere else the sky was clear, and the stars shone with great lustre. A few jackals howled in the distance, and their cry was answered successively in many directions. Then the drums and horns of the several guards at the gates and on the outer walls and bastions of the city, sounded deep and shrill one by one, and were taken up by those in the "Ark" or citadel of the palace, and so died away in the distance. His eye followed the line of towers and battlements, and narrowly watched every light which might betoken a stir among the troops within; but there was none. The huge dome of the mausoleum of Mahmood Adil Shah, not long completed, stood out in a dark heavy mass against the clear sky: and beyond it the outlines of the Palace of the Seven Stories--the great Cavalier--and a confused mass of trees and buildings intermingled; nearer, too, the massive walls and arches of the tomb of the mother of the late King, then, as now, unfinished. All was still. High up in the palace a light twinkled now and then faintly, on which Tannajee speculated dreamily. Was the King awake? the light was in his private apartments. What could he be doing so late in the night? for the drums and trumpets had sounded the third watch. O that he would join heartily with his master, and defy the Moghuls! Would no one tell him this was his best policy? Better a thousand times to secure the fidelity of a large portion of his own subjects by timely concession, than to defy and coerce their chieftain. Now, too, though the Moghuls had been once beaten off, it would not be so again. They were resting and gathering strength, and one by one the independent kingdoms to the north had fallen before them. How long would this remain?--this, the most extensive, most valuable, and most heretical. Better far, then, to secure the Mahratta people, than to lose all by a double war with them, and with the Moghuls. "Will no one tell the boy this?" thought Maloosray. "We do not wish him evil; but the master must be free, and will be free. The people will assemble at the Dusséra, and the King can then have his choice between a lakh of Mahrattas and a lakh of Moghuls, or both combined; and yet this old family should not pass away--it should not pass away at our hands." But we need not follow his thoughts further: better to transport ourselves to that twinkling light high up in the Seven-storied Palace, and see who sit beside it, and hear what they say. CHAPTER XXXII.