CHAPTER IX.
Sunni had his own room in the palace, a little square place with a high white wall and a table and chair in it, which Dr.Roberts had given him.

The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper.
There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked box.

There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on.
So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his charpoy at eleven o'clock that night.

For a long time he had been listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and thinking of this moment.

Now it had come, and Sunni quivered and throbbed all over with excitement.