Chantry, unable ever to credit any one with less than his own share of honour, accepted gratefully on the Commissioner's behalf, glad to be relieved from a further cleansing of the Fort and from the pressing difficulty of provisions. He explained the arrangement to Sir Colvin, as the Guides swung out of the brown mob of Saris, past the guard of honour into the Residency compound, and formed front with their own undauntable swagger before Rose Chantry's smiling eyes. Aire listened attentively, with his eye on the frail figure in heliotrope on the verandah. "Sounds all that's desirable," he said; "but I'm not the one to settle it. There's your man," he nodded, as Terrington rode up to report. Terrington's hard stare swept the city as the proposal was repeated, a grim smile darkening his mouth. "Very considerate of the old gentleman," he said slowly; "but I think we'll stay here." Chantry exploded with difficulties. The Fort wasn't habitable; he couldn't face the question of supply; the Khan would be insulted; the difficulty of negotiations increased. He turned to Sir Colvin imploringly, but the Commissioner shook his head. "Delegation of authority," he purred. "Mine's political!" "But what am I to tell the Khan?" cried Chantry in expostulation. "Am I to say that you're afraid?" Terrington's stare had included absently the other's face. "Tell the old fox," he said, "that I'm delighted to have a political officer to make my explanations. Last time we met I had, as he'll remember, to make them myself." He asked Sir Colvin's permission to fall the men out for dinner, and rode back without a further word about the Fort. He was unused in the matter of orders either to ask or answer questions. Chantry made a despairing but fruitless appeal to the Commissioner, who replied that, having entrusted Terrington with absolute discretion in the military affairs of the Mission, he could not interfere. "Good man," he concluded; "dam good man! Can talk through my Pukhtu, and cooks like a chef. You'll get used to him, if you stand in with him. But he'd clear out the devil if he got in his way." Sir Colvin had learnt something from the daring fashion in which Terrington had held up the various Khels, ill-affected most of them, but all blandly amiable, from which the Mission had accepted hospitality on the road to Sar. He had fixed each, as he approached it, in a grip of steel; covered its avenues, commanded its towers, as if about to exterminate a nest of hornets; but he had entered with an air of unconcerned good-fellowship, as though the rifles ranged without to avenge him and the naked steel at his elbow had no real existence. "What's about the risk in these places?" Sir Colvin had asked on quitting one of the most forbidding. "Never can tell," replied Terrington with a shrug. "Treachery with these chaps is like a hiccup. It often comes as a surprise, even to the man who has it." "And don't they rather resent your precautions?"