They had been given an earnest against their long delinquent wages; and they were in a happy frame of mind.

Their dead comrades were dead and mourning was for widows; but for them would be the pleasures of swift reprisals.

The fugitives had gone toward the desert, and in that bleak stretch of treeless land it would not be difficult to find them, once they started in pursuit.
Midnight.
In the compound the moonlight lay upon everything; upon the fat sides and back of the sacred white elephant, upon the three low caste keepers, now free of the vigilant eye of their Brahmin chief.

The gates were barred and closed; all inside the house of Bala Khan were asleep.

Far away a sentry dozed on his rifle, on the wall.