It was his custom when all was still to slip away "to the quarter" where some lingering cords were now slowly snapping one by one.

The old servant noted with surprise a dark form gliding on his trail in several of these goings and comings.

Being of a practical nature, the man who had faced the mad rebels at Lucknow only belted on a heavy Adams revolver, and concluded at last that some others of the household were busied in secret dissipation or nocturnal lovemaking.

"No one man has a controlling patent on being a fool," mused Simpson.

"Black and white, we're all of a muchness." And as he knew they might now leave at any moment he sped away to his last delightful nights in Delhi.
On the night when Alan Hawke returned from Calcutta, the inky blackness of an approaching storm wrapped dreaming Delhi in an impenetrable mantle.