"Only a stand in favour of decency and order. What right has a man to be above his generation? It is extremely inconvenient to the rest of us. If he is successful, he disturbs our actions; if he uses us as a brick wall whereon to dash out his brains, he disturbs our feelings. To return to Dick Smith; the whole affair was foolhardy and ridiculous. If I had been Political then I should certainly have refused to allow that camping-out on the Pass; and so he would probably have been enjoying all that money, instead of dying miserably just when life became worth having." "What money?" asked Philip Marsden hastily. "Didn't you hear? It was in the papers last week,--haven't seen them yet perhaps? Some distant relation of his father's died in England, leaving everything to Smith senior or his direct male heirs; failing them, or their assigns, to charity. So as no one had made a will,--paupers don't generally--some dozens of wretched children will be clothed in knee-breeches or poke-bonnets till Time is no more." In the pause which ensued Philip Marsden felt, as most of us do at times, that he would have given all he possessed to put Time's dial back a space, and to be standing once more on the northern slope of the Peirâk with Dick's hand in his. "_There's the will, Major; it doesn't make any difference, you know_." The words came back to him clearly, and with them the mingled feeling of proud irritation and resentful self-respect which had made him set the blue envelope aside, and advise a more worldly caution. Temper, nothing but temper, it seemed to him now. "There was a will," he said at last, in a low voice. "Dick spoke to me of one when we came over the Pass together. You see there was a chance of his getting a few rupees from old Desouza." John Raby threw away the end of his cigarette with an exclamation. "By George, that's funny! To make a will in hopes of something from a man who died insolvent, and come in for thirty thousand pounds you knew nothing about! But where is the will? It was not among his papers, for strangely enough the people had not looted much when the Pass opened and we went over to search. Perhaps he sent it somewhere for safe custody. It would make a difference to Belle Stuart, I expect, for he--well, he was another victim." "I think,--in fact I am almost sure,"--the words came reluctantly as if the speaker was loth to face the truth,--"that he had the will with him when he died. He showed it me--and--Raby, was every search made for the body?" His hearer shrugged his shoulders. "As much as could be done in a place like that. For myself I should have been surprised at success. Think of the drifts, the vultures and hyenas, the floods in spring. Of course it may turn up still ere summer is over, but I doubt it. What a fool the boy was to carry the will about with him! Why didn't he give it to some one else who was less heroic?"