During the time when Angel had been growing up and blooming into a beautiful and somewhat despotic girl, her guardian and cousin had developed into an enthusiastic worker, a would-be Empire builder. At first, his duty had been among the canals and the distribution of the water supply; he had to see that every village received its due share of water; in the slack season he had to superintend works of construction and repair. He had no society, and no amusements. These years of solitude had a certain effect on his character. He spent his time marching from one canal to another, accumulating stores of experience regarding the conditions under which the peasants lived; his work was tedious and monotonous, but Gascoigne was a young man of active habits and observant eye; he was never dull, and his character was setting into the solitary mould. His manners were a little stern. His feelings were under iron control, but he was always tender to animals and suffering. From the canals Gascoigne was promoted to the frontier, thanks to a little war. Here he had distinguished himself so brilliantly that he was decorated, and wrote D.S.O. after his name. He enjoyed the hardships; the keen, exciting existence, the smell of powder, the chances of life and death, stirred his pulses. Indeed, once or twice he and death had met face to face; but he kept these encounters to himself, and they were only talked about in the men's tents, or a word was dropped in the messroom. He never got into the papers—and yet he was known by hundreds as "Sangar" Gascoigne. It happened when the night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the camp lights, that he and a handful had gone back in the dark to look up some stragglers, and had beaten off the wolfish Afghans, and stood by their wounded till dawn and relief. It was an experience to turn a man's hair white and it turned one man's brain. Let those who know what night brings to the wounded and "cut off" testify if their fears were not well founded? The hardships, the horrors, the honours, of a short but fierce campaign had left their marks on Philip; this and the two years' solitary canal duty had changed him, perhaps, even more in the same period than his pretty cousin Angela.