"You are at the old work, Jem; I can see it in your eye," she said after one glance at her husband’s stern, introspective face. "Is there danger?" "To me possibly; to another certainly," the General responded. "In fact, Madge, it is touch and go whether I can save a man’s life. I do not know yet if he is a good man, but his life is an important one." "Then of course I will go with you," said Mrs. Sadgrove, guessing whose that life was from Alec Forsyth’s early call. "The Shermans, dear people, will be delighted to stay in a duke’s historic mansion, even if the invitation is a little irregular, for are they not Americans? I will go to the morning-room and break it to them." "Without a hint of what is brewing, mind," said the General, and vanished into his own den. He sat for a while in thought, and presently rang the bell. It was answered by a tall Oriental in native costume and turban, who made low obeisance, but listlessly, as though bored to death. As he straightened himself, however, his coal-black eyes, raised deferentially to his master’s, blazed into sudden fire. "Allah be praised! The black tribe walks again!" he cried in his vernacular, reading the sign as easily as Mrs. Sadgrove had done. "Yes, Azimoolah, the black tribe walks. We go to pit cunning against cunning and right against wrong, you and I, as in the days when we rode the jungle-paths under the Indian moon," the General replied in the same tongue. "Art glib of speech and handy with those iron arms of thine, as in the old times when we earned our pensions beyond the black water?" "Try me, sahib—only try me," came the quick answer. "I have feared that I was growing fat and soft in this city of laziness, where the tame _polis_ use not the ways known to you and me, O leader of midnight pursuits. But that look in your eye brings back the old heart-hunger. I want a quarry, sahib, fleet of foot and strong of arm and wily of tongue, to match with all those of thine and mine. Show me such an one, sahib." "So will I, Azimoolah—not one, but twenty quarries, maybe, whom it will tax all our ancient skill to defeat," said the General, with a frosty smile for his follower’s eagerness. "Take heed while I give orders." The conclave that ensued lasted until luncheon, at which it was noticed, though not remarked upon, by Mrs. Sadgrove that Azimoolah Khan did not as usual station himself behind his master’s chair. The General, too, made no reference to his retainer’s absence, but plunged at once into a totally unfounded explanation of the wholesale invitation to Prior’s Tarrant. The Duke of Beaumanoir, he averred, wished to be kind to his young kinswoman, Sybil Hanbury, by asking her down while Alec Forsyth was there, and as that was impossible without a chaperon, he, the General, had suggested a small house-party with Mrs. Sadgrove and Mrs. Sherman to play propriety.