the position in which terrington found himself requires to be explained.

determined to clear out of sar, three ways lay before him. the valley of the kotli to the south, through the gate of the great evil, by which, with sir colvin aire, he had come up from sampur; the darai pass, due east across the kalawari, and then south-east into the punjab; and the palári, north-east, through the wild welter of ranges under the roof of the world and over plains of snow to the western border of cashmir.

the first, though physically far the easiest, was out of the question, since the road would be lined with hostile khels who could force him to fight every mile of the way, with the odds of the ground and numbers always against him.

the darai, which came next in feasibility, was approached over an open and exposed country, and was commanded from above in its most dangerous defiles. consequently it was by the palári, the most arduous of all the roads between sar and hindustan, that terrington determined to retire.

to rashát, which gale was holding at the foot of the palári, there were two roads from sar. one, the longer, which terrington had taken, led up the left bank of the river through gorges of increasing grandeur till the sorágh gul was reached. there the shorter road from sar joined it, and the two rose together to the snows. terrington was forced to go the longer way because he could cover his retreat along it with a small rear-guard, and because the shorter passed through sar itself and beside the very gates of the palace; but he had to face the certainty of finding mir khan and his men at sorágh gul in a position almost impregnable barring his advance upon rashát. there, if wedged between the force in front of him and that following him from sar, he would be forced to starve or to surrender.

the six hundred men under him were too few to be used offensively; he could not squander them against odds in the open. if compelled to fight his way across the sorágh gul not many of that six hundred would find shelter in rashát. by craft alone could he hope to reach the palári with the foe behind him, and the craft that should deceive mir khan would have to be greatly daring. greatly daring it was. he divided his force into three parts. the first, composed entirely of the guides cavalry bengal lancers, was to push on by forced marches to the further side of the double-headed valley which ended in the sorágh gul. being mounted, on a fairly good road and with eight hours' start, it could reach this before the enemy, who was mostly on foot, could arrive by the shorter road through bewal. sending on a summons to rashát for every man that could be spared, walcot, who commanded the cavalry, had orders to wait the arrival of mir khan from bewal, and then, making as much dust as possible, to retire slowly on rashát, fighting as determined a rear-guard action as he could without exposing his men, in order to draw mir khan after him across the gul. it was terrington's hope that the khan, seeing british troops beyond the gul, would imagine that the entire force had reached it by a superhuman effort and, after a perfunctory search of the road towards sar, would follow furiously in order to drive it headlong into rashát.

to complete the deception, the central portion of terrington's force, consisting of the sikhs and bakót levies in charge of the transport, were to remain concealed and not to approach the gul till the khan's intentions became apparent; and the guides forming the rearguard had orders so to delay pursuit along the river road from sar that the pursuers' fire should not reach mir khan's ears at the gul for at least twelve hours after he had reached it.

then if mir khan came to the lure, and followed walcot, the sikhs were to push on at full speed, seize the road where it crossed the gul, and await the rush for safety of the enemy on finding that he was trapped.

it was a scheme of extreme audacity, but in its audacity lay its safety. in splitting up his little force terrington seemed to be offering it for destruction in detail, but the offering was of such effrontery that no one, and mir khan least of all, was likely to be prepared for it. it afforded, so far as terrington could see, his only chance of a blow decisive enough to cripple for the moment mir khan's power. if it failed of that the force was doomed. yet, if it should fail, what else would have succeeded?

though terrington had urged rose chantry to rest while she could, the morning light was peering between the curtains of the doolie before sleep closed her eyes. she listened all night to the silent march: the grunts and whinny of the mules, the jangle of harness, the low-spoken orders of unseen men. and under it all the beat of feet in the dust, the quick clatter of driven hoofs, the dull even tramp of armed men.

when she woke it was high noon and her doolie was resting upon the ground. she pulled aside the curtain and looked out upon a land unknown to her. the doolie stood against a clump of tamarisk, but no other greenness met her eye in that valley of stones. the river bubbled somewhere beneath her out of sight; and, reaching to the sky, on either side of it stood astounding walls of rock, some sheer and broken into awful precipices, others vast shelving slopes of shale which gave an even more oppressive sense of distance and desolation than the cliffs themselves. a jagged ribbon of blue sky showed between them overhead, scarcely wider than the hidden bed of the river, and the sun blazed down into that cleft of air like the mouth of a furnace.

the heat fastened with a slap upon her hand as she stretched it out into the sunlight, and the whole valley seemed to bend and waver in the clear vapour that streamed from every stone. a little green tent was pitched beside the doolie under the tamarisk, but the only other sign of a camp came from the span, of mules being driven down to the water, and some fifty brown blankets stretched between rifles and pegged down with bayonets in the shade of which men were lying in every shape of dreamless sleep. they looked, even to her unpractised eye, terribly few in that wilderness of space.

as she crawled out of the doolie she discovered that there was a sentry posted over her and the tent, who presented arms, much to her embarrassment, as she scrambled up from her knees.

she could see no sign of her ayah, but in the tent she found her dressing-things laid out on a folding camp-table; there was a canvas basin on a trestle, which was also none of hers, and a canvas bath on the floor.

she questioned the sentry in her broken mixture of tongues about the ayah, but he could tell her nothing, and evidently had not seen a woman about the place.

so, very shyly, and after cautious tying of the tent-flap, testing of its skirts, and closing of its little grated window, she began her first toilet in camp, pausing, poised, to listen to every strange sound without, and especially between every splash of the water in her bath.

she was coiling her hair about her head before the tiny mirror in one dense twist, which displayed better than any fashionable device its golden thickness, when she heard the slap of the sentry's hand on the stock of his rifle, and terrington's voice outside the tent.

"hope you slept," it rang out cheerily. "gholam is getting us something to eat as soon as you're ready."

rose chantry's head came through the flap of the tent, with a white arm and elbow moulding the last roll of her hair.

"where's my ayah?" she asked plaintively.

"i wish i knew," said terrington, handing over his horse to a sais and lifting his helmet. "when we started last night she wasn't to be found. you'll have to put up, i'm afraid, with gholam's valeting."

he offered her the idea lightly, as though it were all part of a picnic; but he had ridden through the night, after the ayah's flight had been discovered, tortured by the thought of the woman, sleeping in the litter in front of him, young, lovely, widowed and alone among six hundred men, without a single other of her sex to shield her from the coarseness and defilement of war.

he well knew how men, pressed by the necessities of the field and simplified by the daily presence of death, reverted to a savage shamelessness, a sweeping aside of convention, not at all to their discredit, but of a very fearful grossness to a woman's eyes: and he felt, contemplating the future of the next few days, almost as if he were the accomplice of some iniquitous abduction.

rose chantry noticed—she was learning to notice—that terrington had not been out of the saddle since he left sar. a smoke of dust fell from the wrinkles of his tunic and breeches as he slid to the ground, and there were tiny furrows of dust upon his face. she noticed too—but that needed no learning—how the searching hard-browed look of the scout went suddenly out of his eyes as they fell upon her, and the lines about his lips relaxed. he had ridden forward to the hanging bridge where alone the river could be crossed below the gul, as walcot had sent back word that it would require strengthening to carry the transport, and he was of necessity his own engineer. so he had missed the sleep and meal of which his men had partaken, and had some reason to look way-worn when he appeared before rose chantry's tent after thirty hours of unceasing strain.

yet when he reappeared, washed and shaven, fifteen minutes later, he seemed as alert as though he had but just left his bed. responsibility always endued him with double strength.

gholam muhammed could discover nothing better than a broken biscuit-case to set the breakfast on, so rose brought out the camp table from her tent and improvised a tablecloth from a russian towel.

terrington, returning to find her seated in the shade of the tamarisk making tea, looking, thanks to the close coils about her head, more astoundingly young than ever, blithe and fresh as an english morning, caught his breath with a sharper sense of her isolation.

he seated himself on the biscuit-case at the further side of the table, and his glance travelled from her up the forbidding precipices, and back again to her trim figure.

"well!" she enquired provokingly; "you're wishing me a thousand miles away?"

"i am," he nodded.

"you're not half grateful for your mercies," she retorted; "it ought to be rather a change to have a woman to pour out tea for you before a battle!"

"oh, it is a change," he smiled.

she handed him a mug of blue and white enamel.

"and is there going to be a battle?"

"not to-day," he said.

"to-morrow?"

"probably."

"and shall we all be killed?"

"it's not impossible," he said gravely.

she leant her lips down to her own brimming mug and looked across at him over its edge.

"don't you wish you were safe back in sar?" she said.

he shook his head as she lifted and drained the mug and set it down with a sigh of content.

"i was so thirsty. isn't it grilling? why did you make me wear these clothes? i can't see much sign of the snows. isn't this tinned milk horrid? what's become of all the men? you don't seem to have kept many to look after me! will you have an egg?"

"please," said terrington to her last question.

"was that your bath and basin i had this morning?" she went on.

"it was," he said.

"i don't see why i should be clean at your cost," she demurred.

"oh, you're not," he assured her; "you're the only one in the force with time to be clean at all, and even you won't want to wash after to-morrow."

"we shall all be killed, shan't we?" she asked mischievously.

"whether or not," he said drily; "we shall be too cold to have much use for water."

"i can't imagine such a condition just now," she answered.

"you'll be able to when you've crossed the palári," said terrington quietly.

she twisted her chair sideways, put one hand above the other across the back of it, and leant her chin upon them both. she watched terrington so for a few seconds while he finished his egg. then she asked:

"what have you done with captain walcot?"

"he's commanding the advance-guard."

"miles and miles away?"

"i hope so by now," he said.

"is he going to fight to-day?"

"no."

"to-morrow? when we all do?"

"mir khan permitting," said terrington with a smile.

"will it be more dangerous where he is than where we shall be?"

"no," said terrington; "rather safer. he'll have a line of retreat."

"safer!" she echoed with astonishment; "then why didn't you send me with him?"

terrington looked at her thoughtfully as he inverted the tin of milk above his mug.

"pure selfishness," he said. "i wanted some one to pour out tea for me before the battles."

"i don't see why you shouldn't speak the truth," she pouted.

"i don't see why you should want it spoken if you know it so well," he said.

"you were afraid to send me with him!" she thrust out sharply.

"was i?" he said, cutting off the drip of the milk with his spoon.

"yes! you were afraid he'd spend his time with me instead of looking after his men."

terrington pushed the kedgeri towards her persuasively, but she shook her head.

"do you know that captain walcot is in love with me?" she went on.

"how should i?" he said, helping himself to the dish she had declined.

she gave a little hopeless sigh at his obtuseness and a complacent tilt of the head.

"he's been in love with me ever since he came to sar," she asserted.

"has he?" said terrington, puzzled by the confidence.

"yes," she nodded. "you think that very wrong, i suppose?"

"well," he admitted mildly, "do you think it very right yourself."

she straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin, and her grip tightened on the back of the chair.

"it's not a question of what i do or don't think right," she said with sudden fierceness; "it's a question of what a woman's got to be and to put up with out here if she's tolerably good looking. you think we're just silly fools, who laugh and chatter and let men make love to us. you don't know that it's just to keep things pleasant, and prevent rows for one's husband in little places like sar, where every one's jumbled together, that one does laugh, and chatter, and pretend not to see things, and seem to like things that one hates. you suppose, because we don't make a fuss, that we're frivolous and empty-headed, and don't think for a moment what a time you'd have of it if we went in for being anything else."

"no," said terrington doubtfully; "i don't suppose we do."

he was perplexed by her revelation, never imagining that it came of a desire for his good opinion, and resenting her careless sacrifice of another man's secret. he knew nothing about women, nor how little they counted a loss of honour from the sacrifice of anything in what could be considered an excusing cause.

so that he was quite unprepared when, with her elbow propped upon the chair, and turning her back upon his vague admission, she said in a voice uncontrollably unsteady.

"oh, i know what you think of me!"

terrington, who neither knew what he thought of her nor what she thought he thought of her, held his tongue, and rose, with her back still towards him, and after a sniff at the opposite hills, continued less precariously:

"do you think it's impossible for a woman to change?"

"oh, surely," he protested, smiling; "that's never been urged against her."

"you might be serious when you know i am," she said with such a grieved reproach that terrington repented his levity. "mayn't a woman learn something sometimes from things that happen, even though she was once a fool?"

"yes, i'm sure she may," he assented heartily; "and much quicker than a man."

she turned about towards him gratefully.

"yes," she sighed, "but you'll never believe that i shall be good for anything, after what i did in sar?"

"oh, shan't i!" he said cheerily. he finished his tea, and smiled at her with a new friendliness across the table. "look here," he said, "i'm going to turn in, and i want you to wake me in an hour's time. will you?"

she nodded.

"but you want more than an hour."

"yes," he said, "but i'm not going to get it." he looked at his wrist. "that'll be on the stroke of three. you've got a watch?"

she held hers to her ear.

"it's stopped," she said.

he unfastened his from his wrist and handed it to her.

"wouldn't you like a sleep yourself," he suggested.

"oh, no!" she said.

he threw himself down in the shade of the tamarisk, and, leaning on his elbow, glanced at her for a moment doubtfully.

"it's only to be an hour," he reminded her; "not what you think i want."

"you're going to be called at three," she said precisely.

he smiled at her little air of responsibility as he laid his head down upon his arm, and she, seeing that he had nothing on which to rest it, got up quickly and fetched him a pillow from her doolie.

"why didn't you ask me for it," she said reproachfully.

he took it from her with another smile.

"i'm so unused to the luxury of being looked after by a lady."

but he gave her hand a clasp which meant a good deal more to it than gratitude.

rose chantry sat almost motionless during the hour which followed, in that happy sort of preoccupation which is outside of time. she had strapped on terrington's watch, to feel the loose shackle of it about her thin wrist, and looked now and again at its face with startled consciousness, unaware if minutes or hours had gone by since her last inspection.

the valley lay oppressively silent in the fierce heat. the mirage had eaten up its northern end, and the close-set precipices had melted into an open space of air, which showed, with the strangest effect of disappearance, nothing beyond.

thin blue threads of smoke stretched up to heaven from the forsaken camp fires, and the mules which had come back from watering floundered in the dust; but nothing else seemed to move between those walls of stone except the ceaseless waver of the heated air.

terrington slept without stirring; his lips set as firmly as when he was awake, his lids closed like a mask in bronze, as if rather with determination than from drowsiness.

rose could not help comparing the strong guarded look of his sleeping face with the flaccid abandonment of lewis chantry's, who always slumbered with his mouth open and his eyelids half apart.

at three she leant over and put her finger upon his arm, and his eyes opened quiet and wide awake as though she had touched the spring of his consciousness.

he rose at once, whistled for his horse, was in the saddle three minutes later, and riding, a solitary figure, up the gray road of the stony valley towards the bridge.

rose chantry watched till the undulating outlines of both horse and rider were dissolved in the distorting glare, with a feeling in her heart which no man before had ever brought there.