Evening was just beginning to darken into night, when a gaunt, haggard, wild-looking man in native dress, with a long gun on his shoulder, dragged his weary limbs heavily out of the matted thickets that fringed both sides of the road leading north-eastward to the border of Oude, and threw himself on the ground with a surly oath, which was hoarsely echoed by two other figures, as ragged and dusty as himself, that came creeping out after him.
Curiously enough, though all three were dressed as Hindus, and were very nearly as dark in complexion, they all spoke in _English_.
"Plenty o' dead wood for a fire, anyhow," growled the first man; "but wot's the use? It's jist like our luck, ain't it, Tom, to have a good fire and nothin' to cook at it!"
"Well, it'll keep the tigers off, if it does nothin' else," said Tom Tuffen; "though, if they _was_ to eat us, Bob," added he, with a meaning glance at his own lean hands, "they'd have pretty nigh as poor a supper as we're a-goin' to have ourselves."
"Why, there's some o' them _chupatties_ (thin flour cakes) left yet, ain't there, Sam?" cried Bob Burton sharply.
"Two apiece, Bob--that's all!" replied Sam Black, producing the scanty provisions as he spoke, while his two comrades hastily scraped together and set on fire a heap of dead twigs and withered leaves, round which the wanderers stretched themselves in moody silence.
The meagre meal was eaten without a word; and, in truth, the three outcasts had but too good reason to be so silent and gloomy.
After the breaking up of the robber band which they had joined, they had taken service with one native prince after another, and had passed through all the vicissitudes of wild Eastern warfare. Now revelling in short-lived luxury--now fighting for their lives against terrible odds--now heading a mutiny for arrears of pay, and sacking the palace of their so-called master--one week filling their pockets with precious stones and gold _mohurs_ (to be instantly flung away in the wildest freaks of excess), and then a week later, struggling half-starved through swamp and jungle, with a swarm of merciless foes in hot pursuit--they had compressed into those few months the perils and adventures of a whole lifetime.