"No, no; I'll go and explore, dear, and do you come with me, and help me to settle in." In a few minutes three figures might have been seen scrambling down to a ledge far below the camp—Mrs. Waldershare, Angel, and her ayah, laden with pillows, rugs, and bags. The "Interlopers," as Mr. Brady termed them, had brought (as is usual all over the Bengal Presidency) their own bedding, also tiffin baskets, spirit lamps, and Indiarubber baths, and by the time that Colonel Gascoigne and his staff rode up to the Government rest-house, the strangers were already footed in the camp, and flowered forth at the dinner-table. Philip, who was tired after a rough ride of forty miles, and a brain-exhausting day, at first received the intelligence of the invasion with exasperating incredulity; but when he heard the general's rasping voice, and Sir Capel's reckless laugh, he realised that Angel, his wife, was not jesting, but in deadly earnest. Then he asked himself angrily if it was not enough to have all the strain of this unique and imminent catastrophe laid upon his shoulders, and to have to make arrangements for the feeding and shelter of about fifty fellow-workers, but to be saddled now, at the eleventh hour, with three useless sightseers? Indeed, the general was not a mere placid spectator, he was a most malignant critic, who wrote his own impressions to the papers, both local and otherwise. That evening, at dinner, eleven souls were crammed round the little dâk bungalow tables, two joined together, and even in this place, on the confines of civilisation, Angel was compelled to respect the order of "precedence"—the general sat next her—as his right—and Lola was placed at her host's right hand. "Oh, Philip, we have made ourselves so comfy," she remarked, playfully; "I am afraid we have invaded you, but there are those two unoccupied huts going a-begging." "Those huts are condemned, and you must turn out of them to-morrow," he said shortly. "Pray why?" with a little defiant laugh. "Merely because they are unsafe." "So _you_ think. General Bothwell holds the opposite opinion. What an alarmist you are." "No, I merely know my business, and I am responsible for your lives." "Supposing I elect to stay?" she said with an indolent smile. "I hope you will not, as I should be compelled to have you carried away by force, the same as a fakir, who established himself in his old cave. He has twice returned, and twice been ignominously removed." "Perhaps the third time will be the charm?" she said gaily. "The third time will be his death. The lake will not last more than thirty-six hours." "Then we are just in the nick of time to see what Sir Capel calls the great water shoot." "I doubt if you will see much; I believe the dam will go at night." "Oh, how depressing you are! When we have come all this distance in order to see the sight and, as the guide books say, any other objects of interest! What do you do of an evening?" she inquired.