They had not nearly enough fighting. The combined plan of the campaign had not been carried out according to their liking. The enemy had been suffered to escape just at the very moment when it was within their power to inflict upon him a decisive and crushing blow. There had been too much of the old womanly element among those intrusted with the conduct of affairs. In a word, the whole business had been bungled. And in this thoroughly characteristic and British growl none joined more heartily than Tom Carhayes. There was one, however, who in no wise joined in it at all, and that one was Eustace Milne. He had had enough of campaigning to last him for the present, and for every reason mightily welcomed the news that they were ordered home. Of late an intense longing had corrie upon him to return, but now that that ardently desired consummation had been attained he realised that it was dashed with the sickening and desolating consciousness of hopes shattered. The campaign, so far as he was concerned, had been barren of result. But for him--but for his intervention--Tom Carhayes would have been a dead man, and Eanswyth would be free. The Kafir could not have missed at that distance. But for his interference the bullet of the savage would have sped true, and happiness for him--for her--would have become the blissful, golden, reality of a lifetime. Even now he would be hurrying back to claim her--that is, allowing for a reasonable period exacted by decorum. But no, the cup was shattered in his grasp, and his own was the hand that had shattered it. "A man who interferes in what doesn't concern him deserves all he gets," was the grimly disgusted reflection which lashed his mind again and again. Why had he intervened to save his cousin's life? When Fortune was playing directly into his hands he, yielding to an idiotic scruple, had deliberately flung back into her face the chance she had held out. She would not proffer it again. His opportunity had occurred and he had let it go by. Yet he could not have acted otherwise. Could he not? he thought savagely, as at that moment his cousin's voice struck upon his ear. Not that its utterances contained anything objectionable, but to the listener's then frame of mind, there was something insufferably self-assertive in their very tone. Could he not? Let him only get the chance again. But this he never would. It was thought by many that the war was practically at an end.