He stood watching intently the answering flashes, twice prompting the reader when he was at fault. Rose, conscious of a certain still determination which had come into his manner, went over and stood beside him. "Has anything happened?" she asked, as the answer to his order sparkled in the air. He wrote a second message before replying; then he put his hand in her arm and walked her back to the sangar. "Yes," he said; "Mir Khan is proving himself to be a good soldier. He's going to take no risks." "Are you taking any?" she asked. "Oh, yes!" he smiled; "I'm taking them all. That's the worst of being the weaker side." He stopped, and looked out again over the Bewal valley, where the enemy's forces could be seen dividing in the form of a Y, one arm leading towards the Sorágh Gul and the other towards the entrance of the Sar defile, where Dore was lying. "He's coming this way?" she suggested. "Yes," he assented, "he's coming this way--half of him. He's either found out our little game, or he's going to make sure we're not playing it. So we've got to fight him here." "Is that worse for us?" she enquired anxiously. He nodded. "And who's over there?" she asked, with a tilt of her head towards the distant hills. "Subadar Afzul Singh and the Guides," he said; "but thanks to Mir Khan, they can move up now, which is a point to us. And now we must go down to lunch." It was all so evidently the playing of a game to him, though the stakes were life and death, that she was infected for the moment by his incentive to the forgetfulness of her own fears, and asked eagerly of Afzul's march as they went down the hill together. Terrington expected the Guides in three hours, and though he had no fear of being unable to hold out until they joined him, it was a question if he could delay his counter attack so long without rendering Dore's position too precarious. Everything would depend on the pace at which the enemy advanced and the force employed for his first attack. When they came again to the water, Terrington knelt down without a word, and Rose seated herself with a laugh upon his shoulder. But he did not set her down when the wet space was crossed, but carried her on to the little green tent which Gholam had pitched above the road, laughing to her protests that it was one of the disadvantages of being so light that people would insist on carrying her. The signal which had dropped from the ridge had set all the camp in motion. Men were building sangars; boxes of ammunition were being unloaded from mules and carried up the hill; all signs of a camp had disappeared and the transport was slowly toiling back by the way it had come. Rose declared herself to be too excited to eat, but Terrington insisted on her finishing what he thought sufficient, and set her an example in appetite in spite of numerous interruptions. No one could say, he reminded her, where nor of what their next meal might be.