"I have come to save you, brother," went on the whispered voice. "If you obey me implicitly you will be free immediately. Put on these, and until I give leave, do not speak so much as one little word." Raynier obeyed him in both particulars. In a moment or two he was arrayed in the white loose garments and turban of the border tribes. For the other injunction, he whispered but one name,-- "Shere Dil Khan?" "Yes. Now--silence." Following his guide, to Raynier it seemed they were traversing endless and labyrinthine passages. With something of a shudder he recognised that horrible door through which he had passed during those acute moments of living death, then the Sirdar opened another door, and the cool free air of the desert, blowing upon them, told that they were outside the walls. Still preserving the most rigid silence, they held on, downward, by a steep path. Turning his head, Raynier could make out the loom of the great mountain mass against the stars, and was conjecturing on the ease and absence of obstacle which had characterised his deliverance at the hands of the Nawab's son, for not a soul did they encounter, no guard challenged them; and it occurred to him that, in the strength of his fetters, his safe keeping had lain, wherefore no watch was placed over him; and this was the real meaning of it. For about half an hour they had been walking swiftly and in silence, when Shere Dil Khan stopped. Before them was a rude herdsman's shelter, and from within came a sound. They entered this, and, was it imagination? but Raynier thought to perceive a human figure dart out at the other end. But here stood two horses, saddled and bridled. "Mount," said Shere Dil Khan, breaking the silence. And he thrust a rifle into the other's hand. "It is a Lee-Metford, and the magazine is fully loaded, but here are other cartridges." "You might well have thought that gratitude was dead in the world, my brother," resumed the Sirdar, as they rode on through the night. "But had I shown any recognition of you then, you would not be here now, for, the Nawab's suspicions once aroused, you would have been strongly guarded. Even to the lady I dared not give the slightest encouragement to hope." "I misjudged you, brother, forgive me. But would not the Nawab have reckoned what I was able to do for you as a set-off against what my father is supposed to have done." "He would not, for he had sworn, and an oath is binding. Now that you have escaped he will not be sorry, when he learns how you saved me from the murderous rabble in your country. But, brother, get your Government to remove you from this border, because now it is the duty of every Gularzai to take your life." Raynier thought that his Government would not require much "getting" under all the circumstances, and perhaps it was as well. "But you, brother? Will not you have to suffer for this?"