XXVI. STAND TO YOUR GUNS 249 XXVII. THE EXECRABLE UNKNOWN 259 XXVIII. YOU SHALL NOT--! 265 XXIX. THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 274 XXX. SHE SHALL UNDERSTAND 285 XXXI. THE LOSS OF ALL 298 XXXII. EVEN TO THE UTMOST 303 XXXIII. THE ONE BIG THING 313 XXXIV. C'ETAIT MA VIE 319 AFTERMATH 323 BOOK I. "If we impinge, never so lightly, on the life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens, in unending circles, through the aeons, till the far-off gods themselves cannot tell where action ceases."--KIPLING. Captain Desmond, V.C. CHAPTER I. JUDGE FOR YOURSELF. "Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an Unseen Hand at a game?"--TENNYSON. Honor Meredith folded her arms upon the window-ledge of the carriage and looked out into the night: a night of strange, unearthly beauty. The full moon hung low in the west like a lamp. A chequered mantle of light and shadow lay over the mountain-barrier of India's north-western frontier, and over the desolate levels through which the train, with its solitary English passenger, sauntered at the rate of seven miles an hour. Even this degree of speed was clearly something of an achievement, attainable only by incessant halting to take breath--for ten or fifteen minutes--at embryo stations: a platform, a shelter, and a few unhappy-looking out-buildings set down in a land of death and silence--a profitless desert, hard as the nether millstone and unfruitful as the grave. During these pauses the fret and jar of the labouring train gave place to a babel of voices--shouting, expostulating, denunciating in every conceivable key. For the third-class passenger in the East is nothing if not vociferous, and the itch of travel has penetrated even to these outskirts of empire. Sleep, except in broken snatches, was a blessing past praying for, and as the moon swung downward to the hills, Honor Meredith had settled herself at the open window, to watch the lifeless wastes glide silently past, and await the coming of dawn. She had been journeying thus, with only moon and stars, and unfamiliar scenes of earth for company, since eight o'clock; and morning was near at hand. The informal civilisation of Rawal Pindi lay fifty miles behind her; and five miles ahead lay Kushalghur, a handful of buildings on the south bank of the Indus, where the narrow line of railway came abruptly to an end. Beyond the Indus a lone wide cart-road stretched, through thirty miles of boulder-strewn desert, to the little frontier station of Kohat.