But most of the crowd, troopers and conspirators alike, felt vaguely that the dawn had indeed come, that the midsummer night's dream of madness was over; that those who were wise would try, while they had the chance, to escape from its consequences. And that such a chance existed, even now, was patent. The very madness of the night, its lack of reasonable explanation, were in their favour. And its darkness, the outer darkness of the storm, which had sprung up in a minute, must have hidden much. Who, for instance, was to say--except those impenitent ones whose evidence, if given at all, must be doubted as the evidence of condemned men seeking to drag others down to their fate--whether such and such a one had been a rebel at first? Provided, always, that there was no doubt about his staunchness at the last; that is, now that the dawn had come--the dawn which showed doubt, almost a surprise, in so many faces. What had come to them? Why were they there? "_Kuchch saiya pur gya!_" (some shadow fell on me) muttered one man below his breath, as he sheathed his sword. And another, with an oath, said boldly, "This one is for the winning side," then gave the cry, "To the rescue, brothers, to the rescue! Cut down the mutineers"--so, promptly, began operations on the nearest defenceless prisoner. Thus, almost before those who had galloped in hot haste after Roshan's lead were out of sight, the prisoners, even the resisting warders, had been driven into the portico, and penned like a flock of sheep between the troopers outside and the pioneers within. "The Lord is King," said the lance-_duffadar_, piously, to a neighbour,--he had started back from Roshan's blow with a scowl, and watched his retreat resentfully,--"the Handle-end of His Sword is safest! Lo! Have at them, brothers!"--he added aloud--"have at the evil-born ones who would have killed the _mems_ and the _baba-logue_ as such scum did in the Great Breathing, making the faces of the soldiery black for all time! Show them our mettle. Forward! 'Gord--save--the--Ka-veen!'" "Gord--save--the--Ka-veen!" The cry grew to a shout, and Dr. Dillon, who, with a great incredulity lessening the values of all he saw and heard, had promptly swung himself down into the courtyard, looked through a crevice in the barricade--which was fast taking form under the willing hands of the pioneers--to see what the noise meant. "It is all over," he said slowly, his face pathetic in its bewilderment; "the troopers are siding with us!" He stood for a moment as if unable to grasp the reality, and his keen, inquisitive eyes seemed to search almost reproachfully for some cause, some hint of reason, in his surroundings. In the splintered door, in every cranny and foothold of the broken stair, and so, past the parapet, they continued their question to the lightening sky, against which, faint and far, those distant peaks where lay the "Cradle of the Gods" had begun to show dimly.