“Look here,” said Stratford, holding out the paper after glancing through it, “the poor fellow has put down his symptoms and the remedies he tried, as a guide to us. He wrote at intervals, evidently. You see, after recording his symptoms twice, he says, ‘Servants gathered round the door watching me. Refuse to bring water.’ Then more symptoms, and then, ‘Servants are looting the house. Afraid to touch collection.’ Now you see the writing becomes much weaker. ‘Ask Miss Keeling to keep collection in memory of me. Take my mother back the Bible she gave me. Good-bye all. Take care of Miss Keeling; they will strike at her next--the only doctor left. God have mercy----’ It breaks off there, you notice, with a scrawl right across the page. The pencil must have dropped from his hand. To think what the poor fellow must have been enduring all alone in the night, with those fiends gloating over him!” They stood up on either side of the dead man and looked at each other. Both were men who would not have flinched in the hottest fight, and yet each now saw reflected in the other’s eyes the unutterable horror of his own. What chance was there of success against a foe who fought with such weapons as this? Stratford was the first to speak. “I must go over and get the Chief to come,” he said. “Will you stay here with--him? I won’t be longer than I can help.” Dick nodded, and he went off swiftly. For a few moments Dick sat still, staring fixedly at the distorted face of the man who had been a true comrade and good friend to him during the last few months. Then he pushed back the box on which he had been sitting, and began to walk up and down the room, averting his eyes from the dreadful thing on the bed. “What are we to do?” he cried in despair. “It’s not for myself--God knows it’s not for myself--but those poor women!” Georgia’s face rose up before him--not an uncommon occurrence in these days--and he ground his teeth as he remembered the dead man’s warning. He was powerless, and he knew it. What could four Englishmen, with Kustendjian and the little handful of native servants, do against a whole nation? How could they defend the helpless women who had come to Kubbet-ul-Haj trusting in their protection? “At any rate,” said Dick, clenching his fist involuntarily, “if they strike at her they shall strike me first!” Presently Stratford came back with Sir Dugald, to whom he had explained hastily the doctor’s suspicions of the night before. Sir Dugald’s arrival and his immediate grasp of the situation did something to lessen the tension in the minds of the two younger men, an effect which was enhanced by the prompt and decisive orders which he proceeded to give.