'Yea, yea, sweetest!' she began breathlessly as the old signs of tears showed themselves--'have patience, pretty. Old Khôjee will surely obey--no tears, darling--she will sound the _naubat_ even now.' She glanced round in her consolations hurriedly. Noormahal still slept at the bed's foot. Khâdjee's snores--she had wept herself into the physical discomfort of a cold in the head--rose regularly from an archway. All else was silence. Every one slept! Even the city! Yes! she would risk it--risk disturbing the neighbours--risk unknown penalties from the breach of unknown by-laws. The child must be saved from tears. So, hastily, she caught up the rushlight, and leaving the courtyard to the moonlight, stumbled, fast as her limp would let her, up the narrow stairs to the _naubat khana_. The rats scuttled from it as she picked her way through the fallen kettledrums that had once swung from the roof, brave in tassels and tinsels; that were now cracked, mouldering, the parchment rent and gnawed. One still hung dejectedly at the farther end, and towards it she passed rapidly. Even on it, however, a rat, driven to extremities in that hungry house, had been attempting to dine; its eyes showed like specks of light as it ran a little way up the tarnished tinsel rope on which the drum swung, and awaited her oncoming. Now Aunt Khôjee, like many another woman East and West, was desperately afraid of rats; yet the _naubat_ had to be sounded. She shut her eyes to give her greater courage, and put all her little strength into her blow. It was too much for the rotten rope. The kettledrum clashed to the ground with hollow reverberations worthy of the old days, and the old woman's frightened cry did duty as the _nakârah_. But behind both sounds came a child's laugh, an elfin, uncanny laugh; and, as she paused--in her flight downwards--at the stair-head, she saw in the moonlight below an elfin, uncanny figure sitting bolt upright among the cushions of state, clapping the little hands that held the glistening signet of royalty, and chuckling to itself gleefully, while Noormahal, roused, yet still bewildered, looked about her for the cause, and Aunt Khâdjee from the archway gave pitiful shrieks of alarm. 'The _naubat_! the King's _naubat_! My _naubat_! Sa'adut's _naubat_!' The cracked, hoarse little voice went on and on till it became breathless, and after it ceased, the sparkle of the ring still showed in the little applauding hands. 'What is't?--what didst do?' asked Noormahal reproachfully. 'Thou hast made him in a sweat. Lo! heart's delight, let me wipe thy forehead--'tis only _Amma jân_--thy _Amma_,' she added coaxingly. But there was no need for that. Sa'adut lay cuddled up on his pillows, smiling, complaisant, both hands clasped over his ring. 'Sa'adut's ring,' he whispered as if it were a great joke, a splendid childish secret that was his to keep or tell, 'and Sa'adut's _naubut_. His own. He will keep them himself.'