Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp. Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since the children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth. For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking, ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for its own sake, just as some men love it. But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet--all his marvellous quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride instead of holding steadily on the straight course. He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed upon Agar as his last hope--his last chance of doing something brilliant in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove him mad. This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune; but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man who would have all and risk nothing.