BISHOP. Ah! (_So he goes back into the corridor and shouts_:) The trumpets, Lorrain!—the trumpets! Sound a fanfare! A miracle! Monseigneur recovers. The Duchy is safe! NURSE (_after a glance at the Doctor_). A miracle, indeed! (_And as the trumpets peal joyously and defiantly, she crosses herself and murmurs_:)—Monseigneur! WALTER FRITH. _THE CALL OF THE WEST._ _A SKETCH OF AN INDIAN REGIMENT._ Through the ‘Kutcha’[7] of the Derajat runs the Indus: it is a shifting river and its tremendous sword of water carves now this channel, now that, on its way to the sea. In 1914 many acres of trees fell before its silver blade in the wood of Turton’s Folly that skirts the approach to the cantonment of Dera Ismail Khan. The road to the railhead at Darya Khan ever shifts with the river’s whims, and is but a track across the drifting sand dunes of the desert. The Indus is a mighty traveller, and the bridge of boats is flung across her in a new place every autumn so that the road travels far from the obliterated line of the previous year. The folk whom one meets upon the road are nomads, or those persistent travellers the Powindahs, who pass over the desert and river in their thousands to leave no more trace than the clouds that travel with the wind. The history of the region is the history of hawk-like travellers; of Alexander the Great who came down the grim passes, horse, foot, and man; of raiders who travel right swiftly and of cavalry that pursues, to this very day. Only the city and the mountains speak of permanence, for the cantonment with its lines and its bungalows is but a halting ground for the soldier folk, who have no abiding place, but travel always like the shifting river and the sands and the winds of the Derajat.