At the end of a week, Lenox was with them still. To his sole suggestion of departure, Desmond had merely replied: "My dear man, don't talk nonsense. When we've had enough of you, we'll let you know it, without ceremony!" And Lenox, strangely loth to return to his bachelor quarters, took him at his word, and stayed on. Yet the two men saw little enough of one another. For on the Frontier work means work: and when cholera hovers over the station like a bird of prey, it is carried on with redoubled vigour. Only by constant occupation can fear and fatalism be held at arm's-length. Only the infectious mettle of the British officer can infuse into all ranks that cheerful alertness which, at a time of epidemic, is the finest safeguard in the world. There is much virtue, also, in mere routine, one of the wingless good angels of earth; and only those who have proved its power to drag broken heart or broken body through the things that must be done, estimate it at its true value. In Lenox's case, it helped to deaden the prick of anxiety as to the future and the physical ache of longing; for as Commandant with two out of four subalterns on the 'sick list,' he had his hands full; and Desmond, the Colonel's chosen friend and ally in all regimental matters, was in the same enviable condition. The more so, since he and Meredith between them had anticipated the modern theory that the spread of cholera or fever can be partially checked by a determined assault on flies and mosquitoes, the great disease-breeders of the East; a suggestion received at that time with a mild amusement, bordering on scorn. But the two men, zealous for the credit and welfare of the regiment--the Great Fetish 'that claims the lives of all and lives for ever'--determined to give the new notion a fair trial in their own Lines; and Desmond, as may be supposed, flung himself heart and soul into the organisation of this very novel form of campaign! Plunged neck-deep again in the work he loved, there seemed no limit to his tireless energy; and from the Colonel downward, all were heartily glad to get him back. Even in an age given over to the marketable commodity, England can still breed men of this calibre. Not perhaps in her cities, where individual aspiration and character are cramped, warped, deadened by the brute force of money, the complex mechanism of modern life: but in unconsidered corners of her Empire, in the vast spaces and comparative isolation, where old-fashioned patriotism takes the place of parochial party politics, and where, alone, strong natures can grow up in their own way.