It was for the falling of that icy portcullis, he felt, that Sar was waiting: waiting till it closed across their chance of escape, across their hope of rescue. Then the gathering conspiracy would burst: burst, as it supposed, on unprepared defenders; and the end would rest with him. It would be a siege, whatever its outcome, as great as any that had lived in story, and the man who saw it through would need no further fame. He was a cavalryman; but this was his ideal of combat: a fight which should test every quality of manhood; a struggle through months of despairing vigilance with unconquerable hordes. Yet though he saw in such a siege the rare chance of a lifetime, a chance for which his life had waited, he tried with an astounding probity to make it impossible. "I believe," he told Sir Colvin on the question of secret fortification, "I believe that we can hold Sar Fort for at least ten weeks, if my plans are carried out; but, if I may say it to you, sir, I think we have no business to try." Asked his reason, he expressed the conviction that the game of military glory in Sar wasn't worth the candle of men's lives which would be burnt in an attempt to relieve it in mid-winter. "Your word, then, is go?" asked the Commissioner. "Yes, sir. Make the immediate discussion of the treaty the condition of your remaining, and let the Khan realize how his refusal will be understood. This place can be wiped out cheaply enough next summer; but if our chaps have to slam up here through the snow they'll lose two men for every one they save." "And how are we to go?" asked the other. "Oh; by the Palári," replied the soldier. it "By the Palári!" exclaimed Sir Colvin. "Why the snow's over it already." "Yes, sir; but Gale is at this end of it in Rashát. What's to happen to him if we creep out by the south?" But the Commissioner shook his head, to Terrington's intense relief. That last argument clinched his decision. The Government which put him into the pickle must take him out of it. He was not going to fight his way home with three hundred men through the snows of the Palári and between the desolate precipices of Maristan, where once in ancient days an army had melted like the spring water upon its courses. So Terrington returned to his loopholes, and Sir Colvin to that merry little messroom in the shade of the chenar where all the trifling rites of home were observed with such an exacting deference, and the chances of the morrow debated with a boy's disdain. The dinner table, however, could show a feature which would have been unusual elsewhere, since a woman sat in its seat of honour. When Mrs. Chantry had made over her two best rooms for the use of the Mission, its members had elected her to the presidency of their mess, and despite the charming shyness with which she took the chair she had converted it at once into a throne.