"'Thou art next in succession.'

"There was no signature.

"None was needed; the prince had preserved several specimens of that chirography at the bottom of various interesting bills of sale.

"As this bizarre scion of an incredibly ancient regime read this extraordinary missive, with its exasperating reference to the restitution of Lal Lu, and considered the prompt realization of the threatened reprisal which had followed his first failure to comply with the request of Ram Lal, a sense of fear and futility possessed him.

"With curious apathy, an unaccountable suggestion of impersonality, almost, he did not pause to consider the absence of the intolerant passion which his loss should have occasioned, or to wonder at his bewildered reception of this implication of further dispossession.

"The prince appeared to be moving as in a spell; but as he concluded the remainder of the missive and remembered, at its inspiration, that he was, indeed, the grandson of the Moghul and the heir-apparent of this pageant throne of Delhi, a sensible degree of his customary cynical assurance returned.

"Hastening to the ante-room, the prince, with alert reanimation, questioned the stalwart official who stood without.

"He indicated to his master that the missive had been left upon the outer sill of the threshold leading from the ante-room to the corridor which opened upon the courtyard.

"Beyond this nothing could be learned; but other and more absorbing information was conveyed to the prince.

"He learned that several bodies of Sepoys had already passed the palace, on the highway, in the direction of Delhi.

"Startled at this rapid confirmation of the statement conveyed in the strange communication which he had just read, the prince rapidly reviewed the singular cause of the mutiny.

"Great Britain had just supplied the native soldiery with the Enfield rifle.

"This weapon was rendered formidable by a new cartridge, which, in order that it might not bind in the barrel bore, was greased in England with the fat of beef or pork.

"With incredible indifference to the prejudices of the Sepoys, the military authorities at Calcutta ordered the low-caste Lascars to prepare the cartridges in a similar manner.

"To this direct invitation disaster was not slow to respond.

"The fat of pigs was sufficient to make a degenerate of a Mohammedan; and to devour the flesh of cows converted a Hindoo into a Mussulman.

"In this manner had Tippu Sultan enforced the faith of Islam on hordes of Brahmins, and with the abomination of pork had the Afghans prevailed upon the Hindoo Sepoys, captured in the Kabul war, to become Mohammedans.

"Exasperated by the unconcealed contempt of the Brahmins, the Lascars, with an easily understood rancor, managed to convey the startling information to their detested superiors that the cartridges they bit in loading the new rifles were greased with the fat of cows, and that they were, in consequence, defiled, and their boasted caste supremacy was destroyed.

"This revelation, so momentous to the Hindoo, found its way first to Barrackpore by reason of its nearness to Calcutta.

"At once an indescribable panic ensued, and in a marvelously short time every native regiment in Bengal was confronted with the possibility of lost caste, and terrified at the consequent belief that the British Government was making an attempt to Anglicize them with beef as they had already attempted to do with beer.

"The account of the greased cartridges, embellished as it speeded, traveled, with the rapidity which usually expedites evil rumor, along the Ganges and Jumna to Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi and Meerut, and the British authorities were confronted with a revolt which was to cost thousands of men and countless treasure.

"As the prince reflected upon the fever of events, and calculated their possible consequence to himself, the ambition--often napping, seldom in slumber--which he secretly cherished, awoke to disturbing vividness.

"His allowance was ample; his retinue, all things considered, impressive; and the Kutub, although in a state of disrepair in certain portions, was still unmistakably a royal residence. But he was thoroughly weary of the massive pile, and increasingly exasperated at the interdict of Delhi.

"Certain salacious possibilities within its walls still made their insidious appeals to him, and he had not forgotten the ceremonious deference accorded him in the household of the Moghul.

"At the Kutub he had to contrive his own dissipations and excesses.

"There was no need to be clandestine.

"The very frankness of his privileges discouraged his imagination. There was no spice of jeopardy in them; no preludes of intrigue.

"To relieve this surfeit, which is the worst of monotonies, eagerly would the prince have joined the revolting troops, detachments of which he could perceive from the walls of the Kutub hastening along the sun-scorched highway to Delhi.

"But his semi-majesty was cautious.

"It was characteristic of him that his mature reflections should frequently place his impulse under obligations; a condition that had resulted in many a salutary compromise with some proposed moral abandon.

"Should he show the slightest countenance to the native troops in the present emergency, the record of such an attitude would constitute anything but a passport to the continued consideration of the British Government, upon whose sufferance he not only enjoyed his present magnificent residence, but the acknowledgment of his right of succession as well.

"The prince was not yet inclined to believe that the Sepoys could make headway against his detested patrons.

"However, with his mind stimulated by the hazard of the prospect, this picturesque heir-apparent, who had assured himself, since his perusal of the unaccountably delivered missive, that Ram Lal had no intention of making his appearance that day, at least, returned to the apartment where his morning repast awaited him, which he dispatched with the preoccupied impersonality of a savant who consults his timepiece in order to determine the temperature.

"Advised of the fact that he had finished by a disposition to ignore his remaining privileges, the prince, as if to pursue the direction of the unseeing gaze which he projected into space, rose slowly, and with that moody deliberation which is so often the outward manifestation of an ignoble as well as an elevated determination, proceeded to the silken arras and disappeared from view between the folds.

"Quickly he traversed the passageway leading to the apartments of Lal Lu; and in response to a light touch upon the gong the same servile apparition emerged and vanished, with cringing obedience, down the passage.

"With a gleam in his eyes, which might have caused a magistrate to reflect or a moralist to anticipate, that was both sinister and engaging, eager and speculative, the prince, with a gesture that was not without its impatient majesty and lithe impressiveness, swept aside the curtains which guarded the entrance to the small ante-room and stepped within."

As the Sepoy reached this point of the narrative, arranged, perhaps, with shrewd malice to tantalize his eager listener, an expression of libidinous expectation and depraved absorption deepened upon the countenance of the latter, who, like an animal deprived of its prey, looked up suddenly as the narrator paused, with an exasperation which he made little attempt to conceal.

"Hell!" he muttered, "why do you pause? It is not late. This is an irritating trick of yours to leave off at the crucial juncture."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the Sepoy mirthlessly. "You have attended me, then?

Well, I can't admit you with the prince until to-morrow evening. I have much to do ere I retire."

"This is my dismissal, I presume," responded Raikes sourly as he replaced the gem, from which he seemed unable to remove his thieving eyes.

"Here, take this damned thing; it has demoralized me," and placing the shagreen case, with its priceless contents, in the hands of the evilly-smiling Sepoy, he disappeared through the doorway.

Arrived at the door which opened upon his room, Raikes was assured, by the familiar response of the locks to the pressure of his extraordinary keys, that his precautions of a few hours before had been undisturbed.

Moreover, his sister, seated in her room in a chair so placed as to command a view of the doorway opposite, and looking more effaced than ever from the weary vigil which her heartless brother had imposed upon her during his absence, advised him of the customary isolation and depression which distinguished this barren household.

Within, Raikes began to make himself secure for the night.

He double-locked the door, placed the heavy bar in the iron shoulders, over which he inserted a stout iron pin.

A brief investigation convinced him that it was out of the question to open the shutters from without.

Satisfied upon these points, Raikes proceeded to the radiator, which for a trembling space of apprehension he forbore to open.

However, since it was certainty he wanted, the valves shortly swung toward him, the inner door responded to the sesame of his touch, and the recess containing the tenets of his religion was exposed to view.