“Stand aside!” said the voice, and there was a rending sound as a sword cut a long slit in the cloth, revealing Sir Dugald dimly against the starry sky. “Out with you!” he said, “and stoop till I tell you to stand up.” Determined to obey to the very letter, Lady Haigh and Penelope crawled out through the slit on their hands and knees, followed by Hafiza, who was so anxious not to be left behind that she kept a firm hold on Penelope’s riding-habit. Sir Dugald led the way through the brushwood, away from the clash of swords and the wild confusion of shouts and yells in front of the tent, and when they had passed the brow of the hill, he gave them leave to stand up. “We are to make for the horses,” he said. “I only hope they won’t have run away, or we shall find ourselves in a hole. But Miani has the sense of a dozen, and wouldn’t go without his master.” They ran and stumbled down the hill, Sir Dugald assisting any one of the three who happened to be nearest, and a little way back on the road they had come, found Miani and four other horses waiting in a hollow, secured to a lance driven into the ground. “But where are the rest?” cried Lady Haigh. “The men can’t have walked from Alibad here.” “There’s a horse for each man,” was the grim reply. “Keeling and I, his two orderlies, and Murtiza Khan--there’s our rescue party.” “It’s perfect madness!” she cried piteously, collapsing on a heap of stones. “There was no need to risk your lives in this way.” “All that could be spared. This is a little jaunt undertaken when we are supposed to be asleep. No one knows about it.” “It’s just the sort of mad thing Major Keeling would do, but you--oh, Dugald! if anything happens to you I shall never forgive myself,” and Lady Haigh sat on her stone-heap and wept ignominiously. “Good heavens, Elma! you’ll call together all the enemies in the neighbourhood if you make that noise. I’m all right at present. Why don’t you weep over the Chief? He’s in danger, if you like.” “Yes, and why aren’t you with him?” she demanded, with what might have appeared a certain measure of inconsistency. “Orders,” he replied tersely. “I have to see you home. Hope we shall be able to collar your ponies. Where did you manage to pick up an ayah? Not one of your captors’ people, is she?” “No, she must go back with us. She belongs to Sheikhgarh. Oh, Dugald----” “Hush! I believe I hear the Chief coming. Here, Major! we’ve got them all right.” “Good!” returned Major Keeling, hurling himself into the group after a run down the hillside. “How are you, Lady Haigh? Pretty fit, Miss Ross? Got a good ride before us still. We must have an outpost here some day--splendid place for stopping the smuggling of arms into Ethiopia.” “And call it after you,” suggested Lady Haigh, now quite herself again. “What shall we say--Kīlinabad? or Kīlingarh? or Kīlinkôt?” “Has this hill any name, Kasim?” asked Major Keeling, turning abruptly to one of the orderlies who had come up.