For two seconds General Sadgrove's eyes blazed along the line of light; then with a spring that would have done credit to one of half his age, he hurled himself upon the combatants, and selecting the topmost for his onslaught, dragged him from the prone figure below.
"Get back to the window! Watch those other fellows!" he called to his nephew, who was hurrying to his assistance. And Forsyth did as he was bid, though he had hardly run back and put himself on guard when the two distant prowlers vanished into the deeper shadows of the refectory wall.
With no gentle hand the General hauled his struggling captive towards the window. Half Forsyth's attention was diverted to the other party to the fray, who was slowly rising from the ground, and the other half to the dark end of the terrace, where the remaining pair had disappeared; and it was therefore not until the General had arrived, hanging like a terrier to his prisoner, that the obedient sentinel had eyes for them. But at last he had to stand aside to allow the veteran firebrand to drag the fighting, kicking figure into the room, and then only did he notice details.
"You've got the wrong one!" he exclaimed. "Don't you see--that's your own man, Azimoolah?"
When the Duke of Beaumanoir found himself alone in the railway carriage after Alec Forsyth's departure he sank back in his corner with a certain sense of relief. The events of the last twenty-four hours had filled him with a very sincere regard for his cousin Sybil, and he had not much faith in the assurance given him by General Sadgrove that his journey down to Prior's Tarrant would be free from danger. His past experiences led him to expect that the terrible Ziegler and his myrmidons would be more than a match for the shrewd but somewhat out-of-date Indian officer, and if there was to be an "episode" on the railway he would be glad to think that it could not now plunge his plucky young cousin into mourning for her lover.
"She is a girl in a thousand," he murmured, as he lit a cigarette; "I should never forgive myself if I were the means of making her a widow before she is a wife. If, as I half suspect, Alec's detachment was effected by a ruse on the part of the graybeard at the Cecil--well, I take off my hat to that gentleman for his consideration."