“This is one of the things that have to be lived down, I suppose. Well, the offence of our friend here seems to be a matter relating to me personally. Will you kindly release him as a favour to me? I think also it might be as well to let him do perpetual sentry-go in the verandah he seems to affect so much--take up his quarters there, in fact, and protect the baby from my machinations. And tell him that he is welcome to use his weapons on me if he catches me there under suspicious circumstances.” “Are you inviting him to murder you?” demanded the Colonel. “He doesn’t seem to need much invitation. But no amount of protestations will disabuse him of his theory, and it would be a pity to deprive Mrs North of such an attached servant. If you point out that last fact to him, it may give me a few years longer to live.” It was with deepening surprise and bewilderment that Ismail Bakhsh heard his sentence, which was delivered in terms of considerable pungency by Colonel Graham. Imprisonment or hard labour would have seemed natural enough, death he had confidently expected; but what did this release mean? The Colonel’s indignant vindication of Mr Burgrave affected him not a whit; but that the man he had accused betrayed neither guilt nor fear did cost him some searchings of heart. CHAPTER XIX. AN IMPOTENT CONCLUSION. Mabel was not far wrong in guessing that before she spoke to Fitz it had been decided he should take part in Daffadar Sultan Jān’s reconnaissance. Colonel Graham’s choice had fallen upon him less on account of any merits he possessed than of his personal appearance. It could not be said that he outshone the other men in coolness or courage, and in knowledge of the surrounding country Winlock, at any rate, was his equal, but the determining point in his favour was the fact which his friends, dancing with rage the while, were forced to acknowledge, that he made up detestably well as a native. From his Irish mother he had inherited the Spanish type of colouring often found in Connaught and Western Munster, large dark eyes, black hair, and a skin so smooth and sallow that very little assistance from art was needed to assimilate it to the comparatively light tint prevailing among the frontier tribes. There were difficulties at first with Sultan Jān, who had once saved Haycraft’s life in a border skirmish, and had constituted himself a kind of nursing father to him ever since. He rejected with scorn the idea of taking any but his own particular sahib with him on his perilous journey, until it was pointed out to him that this would almost certainly involve the death of both. Haycraft’s fair hair, grey eyes, and sun-reddened complexion made it impossible to disguise him satisfactorily, and the old man yielded the point, ungraciously enough, when he had seen Fitz in native dress.