CHAPTER XII.

The afternoon mail brought me a postal-card:

"I shall want you after all. Please ride night and day for a week. It is a matter of life and death."

Changing horses every five or six miles, I rode over the greater part of Asia, subsisting on a light but elegant diet of chocolate caramels. Then I stopped to take tiffin with a striking-looking fellow in a dirty brown cloth _caftan_ Jacobs' face changed when I gave him a silver box Miss Eastinhoe sent him.

"I gave her this myself;" he said; "it is only plated."

"Mr. Briggs," interposed Lamb Ral, with decision, "we are about to go down into the valley. If you see any man attacking Mr. Jacobs, knock him down. If you cannot do that, shoot him under the arm. At any rate dispose of him. I am not Wiggins, but I predict a storm."