It was a fearful pledge to exact, but Jack Everson gave it without hesitation.

"You understand me; enough; let us lose no more time; I will turn to the right; good-bye; we are all in the hands of God."

There was not a tear in the eye of the parent. His heart might be torn by grief, but he was now the Roman from whose lips no murmuring was heard.

It seemed to Jack Everson that the strangeness of the incidents of the past hour had lifted him into a state of exaltation. He never felt calmer nor more self-possessed than when hurrying over the path, rifle in hand, revolver at his hip with the belief that there was not one chance in a thousand that he would ever again look upon the one who had won his heart when the two were on the other side of the world and for whose sake he was ready to go to the uttermost lengths of the earth.

His feeling was: "They have stolen her from us, but by the Eternal she shall cost them dear!"

There was no thought of what all this implied to himself. He did not care what the consequences were, so far as he was concerned. It came to be a legend among the men desperately defending their families and themselves during the horrors of the Sepoy mutiny, that in fighting the unspeakable fiends, the European should save a bullet apiece for his dear ones and one for himself.

Such was the resolve of the young American who was now making all haste to find his beloved and her captors, and settling down into that resolution he acted with the coolness of a veteran.

The first truth that impressed itself upon him was that the path which he was following steadily ascended, being quite steep in many places. This showed as a matter of course that he was attaining higher ground. He was not familiar enough with the country to know that he was approaching a steep ridge of hills, for the doctor had told him nothing of the fact, and the elevated section had been passed in the boat at night. He observed, too, that his course trended to the right, proving that he was penetrating deeper into the country.

"If the line that the doctor is following holds straight on we must approach each other, but his may turn more than mine—confound it!"

He had reached a point where the paths forked again. Supposing he had been fortunate enough to take the right course at the beginning, how could he maintain it?

Swallowing his exasper............