Less than a minute later she was crawling monkeywise along a roof; before another five had passed she had dropped on all fours in the dust of the outer road and was running like a black ghost--head down--an end of her loin-cloth between her teeth--one arm held tight to her side and the other crooked outward, swinging--striding, panting, boring through the blackness.
She wasted little time at the caravansary.

The gate was shut and a sleepy watchman cursed her for breaking into his revery.
"Horses?
Belonging to a Rangar?
Fool! Does not the Maharajah-sahib impound all horses left ownerless?
Ask them back of him that took them! Go, night-owl! Go ask him!" Almost as quickly as a native pony could have eaten up the distance, she dropped panting on the door-step of the little mission house.

She was panting now from fright as well as sheer exhaustion.

There were watchers--two sets of them.

One man stood, with his back turned within ten paces of her, and another--less than two yards away from him--stood, turned half sideways, looking up the street and whistling to himself.
There was not a corner or an angle of the little place that was not guarded.
She had tried the back door first, but that was locked, and she had rapped on it gently until she remembered that of evenings the missionary and his daughter occupied the front room always and that they would not have heard her had she hammered.