“That you never will,” thought Lychnis. She despised them for having hopes and fears. It was all one to her, she told herself, if she were slain there that night. She was looking out through the window of the inn. Opposite, a toppling jade crag flamed with a faint fire of sunset from beyond the Valley. The scene did not move her greatly, she found. She was calm in face of the once heart-hurting beauty of sunsets. She turned once more to examine her thoughts, all upside down as Ambrose had put them. He sat there with his back to her, but the current of all her moods was toward him. As the last rays of light departed from the Chinese landscape, stranger here to them than in the Valley, they heard sounds of considerable excitement in the village. They all went out into the street, and presently little crowds of chattering peasants began to pass the inn. The innkeeper came out at Lord Sombrewater’s request. Such-a-one had vanished. “Ask what the trouble is, Lychnis,” commanded Lord Sombrewater. “Refugees,” the innkeeper conveyed, standing impassively with his hands hidden in his sleeves. “What is happening, then?” she asked. He directed their gaze across the Valley. A young moon had risen over the zigzagging mountain, and there on the precipitous side of it, not half a mile from the inn, were a hundred lights—the camp-fires of the revolutionaries—and on other hills there were other lights. Even as the Sages were looking at one another, and Ruby and Fulke, in each other’s arms, were making appointments for eternity, a flash came from the hillside. The revolutionaries had discharged their field-piece. The shell burst very short. They tried again, with the same effect, and this seemed to put them in a frenzy, for they began a furious cannonade and opened fire with their rifles. But not a shot came over the village, and they slew nothing but the breeze. The villagers, perceiving that the strangers were miraculously protected, sought to share in the working of the charm, and soon the party was surrounded by a dense crowd of bead-eyed Orientals, chattering in the dark. The flash of guns and a flare in the sky told that the attack was proceeding over a wide front. Lychnis watched the proceedings with unconcern. Very soon, perceiving the uselessness of his artillery, the enemy commander changed tactics, and seemed, from the noise that his troops made, about to deliver a hand assault. “There are perhaps five thousand of them,” muttered Sombrewater. “Richard—if we could get the girls away? If you could steal down to the river and get off in the boats?” “It could be tried,” said Sir Richard tentatively. “But it is for you to go, Arnold....” “Leg it with me,” suggested Quentin, prepared to die if his last hours might be amorous. “I will not leave this spot in any circumstances whatever,” Lychnis answered, low and decisively.