"Uncommonly so. Well, what do you think of this place for the grave? It is inside the palace enclosure, and yet quite separated from the palace itself. Even if we set up a new Rajah, I suppose we shall keep a garrison in the town, and a sentry can always be mounted here. No future Resident would care to live so close to the palace after what has happened, I should say." "I suppose you can't do better," agreed Gerrard reluctantly, looking at the overgrown wilderness which represented his carefully kept garden. "Yes, make a cemetery of the place by all means, Rawson. It looks as if it had a curse on it." "What an uncommon romantic fellow you are!" said Rawson good-humouredly. "This was my chief reason for choosing the spot. Look here!" He took Gerrard by the elbow and turned him round. From where they stood they looked straight through the breach made by the guns, and along the rough track formed by levelling the houses from the chasm in the outer to that in the inner wall. "See that? Almost a straight line, ain't it? Well, if we bring 'em in through the double breach, along that road, and bury them here in the heart of the palace, will it, or will it not, produce a fine moral effect?" "Magnificent!" murmured Gerrard, the dramatic force of the idea gripping him. "Regular time's revenge." Two or three days later time's revenge was completed. The bodies of Nisbet and Cowper, removed reverently from their desecrated grave and wrapped in the costliest Kashmir shawls to be discovered among Sher Singh's treasures, were borne through the breach in the city wall, attended by representatives of every unit of the besieging force, across the devastated town and through the ruined defences of the palace, to be laid to rest in the secluded garden with every possible military honour. As the last echoes of the firing over the grave died away, Gerrard turned to Charteris with quickened breath. "Bob," he murmured, "they have made a way for a corpse through the great wall of Agpur." [1] In modern parlance, "gas." CHAPTER XXIII. RUN TO EARTH.