Lois and Stafford had arrived at that stage of friendship when conversation becomes unnecessary. They walked side by side through the Colonel's carefully tended garden and were scarcely conscious that they had dropped into a thoughtful silence. Yet, as though in obedience to some unspoken agreement, their footsteps found their way to the ruined bungalow and there paused. As a look can be more powerfully descriptive than a word, so these shot-riddled walls had their own eloquence. Each shot-hole, each jagged splinter and torn hinge had its own history and added its pathetic detail to the whole picture of that disastrous night when the vengeance of Behar Singh had burst like a hurricane over the defenseless land. After a moment's hesitation Stafford stepped forward and, pushing aside the heavy festoons of creeper which barred the doorway, passed through into the gloomy interior. "I should like to see the place from the inside," he explained to Lois, who, with an uncontrollable shudder, had followed him. "One can imagine better then how it all happened." "I think of it all--often," she answered in a hushed voice, "and every time I seem to see things differently. My poor mother!" "You never knew her?" he asked. "No, I was too young--scarcely more than a year old. Yet her loss seems to have overshadowed my whole life." "Was she like you?" "Yes, I believe so. She was dark--not so dark as I am--but she was stately and beautiful. So she has always been described to me, and so I always seem to see her." Stafford turned and looked about him. "It must be almost as it was then," he said wonderingly, pointing to the rusty truckle-bed in the corner. "And there is the broken over-turned chair! It might have been yesterday." She nodded. "So my guardian found it," she said. "It had been my father's bungalow and he never allowed it to be touched. When I came of age I gave it to him. It seemed to belong to him, somehow. They say that it nearly broke his heart when he found that he had come too late to save my father. My father was his dearest, almost his only friend." "Were they killed at once?" Stafford asked with hesitating curiosity. "I have never known the rights of the case. It has always been a painful subject for me--with you I don't mind." It was the faintest allusion to a bond between them which both silently recognized, and Lois turned away to hide the signal of happiness which had risen to her cheeks. "No one knows," she answered. "The bodies were never found. It was part of Behar Singh's cruelty to hide the real fate of his victims. For a long time people used to hope and hope that in some dungeon or prison they would find their friends, but they never did. One can only pray that the end was a mercifully quick one." "And Behar Singh died in the jungle?" "So the natives said. No one really knows," she replied.