On the side of the white paper cylinder nearest her a curious brown streak appeared--by the merest freak of chance her glance fell on it. As she looked, the thin stain grew darker nearest the fresh ash. The farther end of the faint tracing moved--yes, moved, like a threadworm groping its way along a stick. "Now what are they all doing out there?" Kitty Sherman was asking. "All those men running top speed with their guns carried up so high." "Bayonet charge," Kimball answered. "Nothing like the real thing, of course." Jane Gerson was watching the twisting and writhing of that filament of brown against the white. An invisible hand was writing in brown ink on the side of the cigarette--writing backward and away from the burning tip. It lengthened by seconds--"and Louisa to Crandall." So the letters of silver nitrate formed themselves under her eyes. Kimball took the cigarette from his lips and held it by his side for a minute. He and Kitty were busy with each other's company for the time, ignoring Jane. She burned with curiosity and with excitement mounting like the fire of wine to her brain. Would he never put that cigarette to his lips again, so she could follow the invisible pen! So fleeting, so evanescent that worm track on the paper, wrought by fire and by fire to be consumed. A mystery vanishing even as it was aborning! After ages, the unconscious Kimball set the cigarette again in his lips. "--nformer has denounced you and Louisa-t- --play your game and he will be slow to----" Again the cigarette came away in Kimball's hand. Acting on impulse she did not stop to question, Jane struck it from the young man's outstretched hand and set her foot on it as it fell in the dust. "Oh, I'm clumsy!" She fell lightly against Kimball's shoulder and caught herself in well-simulated confusion. "Standing tiptoe to see what that man on a horse is going to do--lost my balance. And--and your precious cigarette--gone!" The anguish in Jane Gerson's voice was not play. It was real--terribly real. CHAPTER XIV THE CAPTAIN COMES TO TEA Jane Gerson, alone for the first time since the incident of the cigarette on the parade ground a few hours back, sat before a narrow window in her room at Government House, fighting a great bewilderment. The window opened on a varied prospect of blooming gardens and sail-flecked bay beyond. But for her eyes the riot of color and clash of contrast between bald cliff and massed green had no appeal. Her hands locked and unlocked themselves on her lap. The girl's mind was struggling to coordinate scattered circumstances into a comprehensible whole, to grapple with the ethical problem of her own conduct. What she knew, or thought she knew--and what she should do--those were the two saber points of the dilemma upon which she found herself impaled.