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A religious Diwan, or assembly, was constituted at Lahore, to which local bodies were affiliated, with the object of preaching purity of religion and promoting the abolition of caste distinctions and other Hindu influences that had crept back into Sikhism.
Luffe looked sternly at the Diwan. "Tell Wafadar Nazim to have a care lest they go never, but set their foot firmly upon the neck of this rebellious people." He rose to signify that the conference was at an end. But the Diwan did not stir. He smiled pensively and played with the tassels of his cushion.
He stared down at his ankles, which also were throbbing agonisingly to learn that they were confined in gyves attached by a short chain to a ring in the floor! He was lying upon a deep diwan, which was covered with leopard-skins and which occupied one corner of the most extraordinary room he had ever seen or ever could have imagined.
So she lay, her whole body quivering with the frenzy of her emotions, and as she lay there, inch by inch, cautiously, the nearer door began to open. Chunda Lal looked in. Finding the room to be occupied only by Miska, he crossed rapidly to the diwan, bending over her with infinite pity and tenderness. "Miska!" he whispered softly.
"Surrounded by uncertainties, and utterly helpless in my isolation, I could but drift whither the stream of destiny carried me. "'The king is dead, I announced, when the last flutter of the heart had ceased. 'May God in His compassion give him peace. "The diwan summoned the captain of the bodyguard, and the latter, to make certainty doubly sure, brutally shook the dead man by the shoulder.
"They cast a noose over his head," replied the Diwan, "dragged him from the tent and stabbed him." Dewes nodded and turned to Luffe. "These letters and things must go home to his wife. It's hard on her, with a boy only a few months old." "A boy?" said Luffe, rousing himself from his thoughts. "Oh! there's a boy? I had not noticed that. I wonder how far the road will have gone when he comes out."
The departure of the Mirza for this campaign was extremely agreeable to the Diwan, Majad-ud-daulah, for he never lost an opportunity of prejudicing the Emperor's mind against this powerful rival, in whose recent appointment to the office of Naib Vazir, moreover, he had found a special disappointment.
At length arrived the memorable 10th of August, which, perhaps, as far as any one date deserves the distinction, was the last day of the legal existence of the famous Empire of the Moghuls. Followed by the Deputy Controller, Yakub Ali, and by four or five of his own most reckless Pathans, Gholam Kadir entered the Diwan Khas, and ordered Shah Alam to be brought before him.
A cunningly devised door looking like a section of solid brick and plaster wall was closing slowly heavily. Through the opening which yet remained he caught a glimpse of a small room, draped with Chinese dragon tapestry and having upon a raised, carpeted dais a number of cushions forming a diwan and an inlaid table bearing a silver snuff vase. A cowled figure was seated upon the dais.
Gerrard remained silent a moment, Dwarika Nath's interview with him in his tent, and the expulsion of the disgraced Diwan from the city, jostling one another in his mind. Then quite another thought came upper-most. "So you set spies on me in my own tent, Maharaj-ji!" he cried indignantly. "And you call me your friend!"
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