There was nothing to be said, for all that was to come was
action; but I knew Isaacs distrusted the maharajah, and that without Ram
Lal's assistance--of whatever nature that might prove to be--he would
not have ventured to go alone to such a tryst.
When I returned the camp was all alive, for it was nearly seven o'clock.
Kildare and the collector, my servant said, had gone off on _tats_ to
shoot some small game. Mr. Ghyrkins was occupied with the shikarries in
the stretching and dressing of the skin he had won the previous day.
Neither Miss Westonhaugh nor her brother had been seen. So I dressed and
rested myself and had some tea, and sat wondering what the camp would be
like without Isaacs, who, to me and to one other person, was
emphatically, as Ghyrkins had said the night before, the life of the
party. The weather was not so warm as on the previous day, and I was
debating whether I should not try and induce the younger men to go and
stick a pig--the shikarry said there were plenty in some place he knew
of--or whether I should settle myself in the dining-tent for a long day
with my books, when the arrival of a mounted messenger with some letters
from the distant post-office decided me in favour of the more peaceful
disposition of my time. So I glanced at the papers, and assured myself
that the English were going deeper and deeper into the mire of
difficulties and reckless expenditure that characterised their campaign
in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1879; and when I had assured myself,
furthermore, by the perusal of a request for the remittance of twenty
pounds, that my nephew, the only relation, male or female, that I have
in the world, had not come to the untimely death he so richly deserved,
I fell to considering what book I should read.
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