they began to give him a wide berth. Just as he got out of the scrimmage, Sultan Jān went down, and in falling knocked over the lamp and put it out. The enemy devoted their attention to one another for some little time before they saw what had happened, and then they started to find Anstruther. He was standing up, perfectly quiet, against the side of the hut, and he says it nearly turned his brain to hear the fellows feeling for him in the dark, while he knew that his only hope was not to move. They didn’t find him--actually! but they found the Hindu instead. He had been hiding in a corner in an awful fright, and they killed him, and having accounted for two, thought they had done their business. They didn’t stop to mutilate the bodies, apparently because there was a false alarm in the town just then. You know one of our men let off his rifle by mistake last night, and we noticed that the enemy seemed a good deal disturbed. Well, there was Anstruther left in the hut, with what he believed to be Sultan Jān’s dead body. And this is what the old man can’t get over--he wouldn’t leave him to be cut up by those swine, but dragged him down to the canal, and when he had fetched over one of the skins and blown it out, tied him on to it, and started to swim up here. But as soon as the cold water touched Sultan Jān’s wounds, he revived, and was able to put one arm round Anstruther’s neck, and so make it a little easier for him. But it was tremendous--simply tremendous, and if ever any man deserved the V.C., Anstruther does, though of course he won’t get it, being merely a poor wretch of a civilian.” “Why, Mab!” cried Flora, for Mabel had risen suddenly. Her eyes were dilated and her cheeks flushed, and she looked more beautiful than the others had ever seen her. They almost expected her to break out into an impassioned eulogy of Fitz’s achievement, but the sight of their astonishment seemed to recall her to herself, and she faltered and grew crimson. “Oh, it’s too splendid!” she stammered. “I--I can’t bear it,” and they heard a sob as she rushed away. “I say!” remarked Haycraft, with meaning in his tone. “Fred!” responded Flora, in a voice of such crushing severity that he hastened to apologise, and to assure her that he had not meant anything. “Of course not. Why should you mean anything?” demanded Flora. “Oh no, naturally. There was nothing that should make any one mean anything,” he said lamely; whereupon, as a reward for his docility, Flora assured him she had great hopes that everything would come right, and when it did, he should know all about it, but that if he went and fancied things and made trouble, she would never speak to him again. “All right! Henceforth I am blind and deaf and dumb,” he declared. “That’s right! When you can’t do anything to help, at least you needn’t spoil things. Oh, but that reminds me, Fred. I am not blind and deaf, you know. Is it true that Mr Beardmore is dead, as the servants say?”