Behind
him Noreen was rising from a chair.
"Who's there?" cried the boy, raising a revolver.
"It's all right, Daleham. It's I, Dermot. I'm alone, I'm sorry to say."
A stifled cry burst from the girl.
"Oh, you are safe, thank God!" she cried, her hand at her heart.
"What has happened here?" asked Dermot, entering the room.
Fred let fall the curtain as he answered:
"Hell's broke loose on the garden, sir. The coolies have mutinied. Parry's
dead, murdered; and we're alive only by the kind mercies of that brute
Chunerbutty, damn him! You were right about him, Major; and I was a
fool.... Is it true you've been attacked up in Ranga Duar?" he continued.
"Are you wounded, Major Dermot?" broke in the girl anxiously.
"No, Miss Daleham. I'm quite safe and sound."
Then he told them briefly what had happened. When he had finished he asked
them when the trouble began at Malpura.
"Three days ago," replied Fred. "The wind was blowing from the north, and
we heard firing up in the mountains. I thought you were having an extra go
of musketry there. But the coolies suddenly stopped work and gathered
outside their village, where those infernal Brahmins harangued them. I went
to order them back to their jobs----".
"Where was Parry?"
"Lying dead drunk in his bungalow. Well, some of the coolies attacked me
with _lathis_, others tried to protect me.
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