In other respects, his training had gone on uninterruptedly every day. He went out into the town, accompanied sometimes by Rajbullub, sometimes by Surajah, in the disguises of either a peasant, a soldier, or a trader; and learnt to walk, and carry himself, in accordance with his dress. Before putting on these disguises, he painted himself with a solution that could easily be washed off, on his return to the palace, where he now always wore a European dress. "You cannot be too careful," the Rajah said. "There are, of course, Mohammedans here; and, for aught we know, some may act as agents or spies of Tippoo, just as the English have agents and spies in Mysore. Were one of them to send word that you had taken to Indian attire, and that it was believed that you were about to undertake some mission or other, it would add considerably to your difficulties and dangers. As it is, no one outside our own circle ever sees you about with me or the boys, except in your European dress, and Rajbullub tells me that, in no single instance while you have been in disguise, has any suspicion been excited, or question asked by the people of various classes with whom you and he converse in the streets." Another month passed, and by this time Dick could, without any great fatigue, squat on his heels for an hour at a time. As the date for his departure drew near, his mother became more and more nervous and anxious. "I shall never forgive myself, if you do not come back," she said one day, when they were alone. "I cannot but feel that I have been selfish, and that really, on the strength of a conviction which most people would laugh at as whimsical and absurd, I am risking the substance for a shadow, and am imperilling the life of my only boy, upon the faint chance that he may find my husband. I know that even your uncle, although he has always been most kind about it, and assisted in every way in his power, has but little belief in the success of your search; although, as he sees how bent I am upon it, he says nothing that might dash my hopes. "If evil comes of it, Dick, I shall never forgive myself. I shall feel that I have sacrificed you to a sort of hallucination."