"The wounded!" she repeated with a little shudder. "Yes," he said; "you'll see a good deal of them during the next few days, and it's as well to be of use. If you'll take this to him," he went on, folding up a note, "he'll show you what to do. It's only the making up of bandages," he continued, as she held back; "the time left us is very short." Something scornful had come into his voice, though ever so faintly, and something compelling as well. She took the note when he held it out to her, unable, despite her will, to do anything else. As she passed the doorway Hussain Shah appeared on the landing beyond it, the folds of the turban above his temple stiff with blood. She paused an instant to hear Terrington's greeting, but the greeting was in Pukhtu, which she did not understand. Had she understood, her opinion of Terrington's hardness would have been confirmed, for no reference was made to the wounded man's condition until he had received his orders. "Are you fit for duty?" said Terrington simply. "I am unhurt, sir," replied the other as he saluted. Half an hour later every available man in the force was paraded in the courtyard of the Fort. Walcot with his Lancers in front; then, behind Terrington, the Sikhs and Dogras that could be spared from the Fort, the Guides bringing up the rear. The Maxim had been hoisted on to the roof of the Eastern Tower, whence it covered for a certain distance an advance on the Palace. In the silence the blow of a pick could be heard, and the falling stones from the last loopholes in the walls. Terrington sat his horse immovably, waiting for the signal from Afzul Singh which should open the gates. He was burning with a dull anger against the circumstance in which he had been placed, and against the folly of the men who had created it. He knew that in marching on the Palace to demand the men who had entered it that morning he was imperilling the safety of his entire force; yet he knew, too, that sentimental England would never forgive his sanity in declining the risk should any of Sir Colvin's party happen to be still alive. He had no hope of their safety. He was too well acquainted with the temper in which they had been attacked. That he viewed with no resentment whatever. It had been a piece of the foulest treachery, but treachery was a virtue in Sar, and he was quite able to accept, and even to respect, alien standards of conduct.