"Afzul Khân! That was the name of the sepoy you arrested at Faizapore." Did she remember that? It was so long ago; long before the day he had seen her last, when he had tried to comfort her, and she had sobbed out her sorrow as to a brother, in just such another bare shadowy room as this. Ah, poor Belle, poor Belle! Had it all been a mistake from beginning to end? The only refuge from bewildering thought seemed speech, and so he plunged into it, explaining, at far greater length than he would otherwise have done, how he came to be sitting beside her, instead of lying with whitening bones in some deep pool in the mountains. He must, he said, have become unconscious from loss of blood, and slipped into the river after he was wounded, for Afzul Khân from his place of concealment on the water's edge had seen him drifting down and dragged him to safety. They were a queer lot, the Afghans, and Afzul believed he owed the Major a life. After that it was a week ere he could be taken to decent shelter, because Afzul was also wounded; but of all this he himself knew nothing. His unconsciousness passing into delirium it was six weeks ere he awoke to find himself in a sort of cave with snow shining like sunlight beyond the opening, and Afzul cooking marmot-flesh over a smoky fire. Even after that there was a rough time what with cold and hunger, for it was an enemy's country, and the people about were at blood-feud with Afzul's clan. At last it became a toss-up for death one way or the other, seeing he was too weak to attempt escape. So he had given himself up to the tribe, trusting that to their avarice an English prisoner might be worth a ransom, while Afzul had gone east promising to return with the swallows. Then months had passed bringing threats of death more and more constant as the promised ambassador never returned, until towards autumn, being stronger, he managed to escape, and after running the gauntlet of danger and starvation succeeded in reaching Afzul's tribe, only to find him slowly recovering from rheumatic fever brought on by exposure and privation. The poor fellow had been at death's door, and long ere he was strong enough to act as pilot eastwards winter had set her seal on the passes. So there they had remained, fairly comfortable, until spring melted the snows. "And," he added with a smile, for Belle's face had resumed its calm, "I grew quite fat, in comparison! Yet they all took me for a ghost when I walked in to the mess-room at Kohât one evening after dinner,--just as I walked in here." But her truthful eyes looked into his and declined the excuse. "No! I did not take you for a ghost, except for an instant. I knew it was you, and that you had come back to claim--everything." "Then you knew wrong. I have come to claim nothing. Perhaps I have no right to claim anything; so it need make no difference--" "It must make a difference to John," she interrupted coldly. "I was thinking of him. It is hard on him at all events."