Hope lived wildly now in Cardinegh’s eyes. “And while you are doing the book,” he muttered, “I am to live out your tinsel and truffles here, play the grizzled warrior--led about by the child of her mother.... Routledge--Routledge, your brand of stimulus is new and raw.” “I’m tolerated to ordinary poisons, Jerry. A man immersed in gentle azure can’t get the other pigments out of his brain.” Cardinegh arose. “It’s sweet heaven to me,” he murmured strangely, with quivering lips. “It is a rest such as I have never known. I never was ready to rest until now, until to-day--when I thought the chance was burned away. You want to take this?” “Yes.” “Months of life--Home, Noreen!... Damme, Routledge--I’m broken! It’s like you, Routledge--it’s like you----” “To me it’s a gift of the gods! Hold on, Jerry, until I bring back the Book--hold on and sit tight!” Cardinegh left the lodging and Bookstalls, bewildered by his new possession of days. The strain that had kept him afoot until the end; that had stiffened his body and faculties for the end itself; carrying him step by step from the Khyber Hills, through the Bhurpal campaign (the days in which he had watched the results of the fire he had started); the strain that had roused his personal craft to baffle and disarm those men of uncanny keenness at Naples, and pulled him up for a last rally in London--was lifted now, and with it relaxed the substance of his brain and body. Doubtless, he would have preserved his acumen upstanding, and an unsnapped nerve, to bid Noreen farewell and make his confession at the War-Office to-day--but there was no need!