"They’ll have a tougher job this time," said Mr. Appleton, in the quiet hour before bedtime. "It was easy enough to lop off one of the extremities of the empire, but they’ll find things more difficult as they near the European border, if that’s what they are aiming at. I don’t know whether you know anything about history----" "I know Napoleon’s campaigns, not much else," said Bob. "Well, you can take it from me, then, that when the Mongols were at their strongest they couldn’t keep a permanent footing in European Russia. But there’s such a lot of them, all mounted, too, that there’s just a chance they may sweep across the southern plains as their forefathers did. Russia is in a bad way; they know that, of course. This long war with Germany has broken her credit; she’s seething with unrest and rebellion; Finland’s in revolt at last, and I shouldn’t wonder if the Poles make a move now: they wouldn’t before, because they don’t love the Germans. It’ll be rather curious if the Mongols do cut a slice out of the bloated monster." A night or two after this, when the caravan had departed, Bob awoke in the small hours, and feeling rather thirsty, got up for a drink. The day had been very hot, and before returning to bed he sat at the open window to inhale the fresh cool breeze that blew along the gorge. Everything was very still. All that he could hear was the gurgling of the stream, now swollen to its full extent by the melted snow from the mountains; and the occasional whinny of a horse from the sheds that served as stables on the other side. He had sat thus for a few minutes drinking in the beauty of the night when his eye was caught by a faint glow in the distance. It seemed to be near the entrance of the Pathan gallery, his own section of the mine. The glow flickered; it was not strong enough to light up the surroundings. "That’s very curious," he thought, and was on the point of awaking Lawrence, when it occurred to him that he would look rather foolish if it proved to be nothing but a colony of glow-worms. He knew nothing of natural history, or he would not have suspected the possibility of finding glowworms in such a spot. But he was sufficiently curious to feel that he must find out the cause of the light. He could not leave the house without passing through his uncle’s room, and unwilling to disturb the household, he made up his mind to climb out of the window, which was at no great distance above the ground. The timbers of the upper part of the house were rough; and a practised climber would find no difficulty in descending by availing himself of their inequalities until he reached the stone part and could drop.