it. She had
waited six long years. What was another month or two?

She had not even a notion where Bill was, beyond a vague one that he
belonged to another province. For when the Honorable East India Company
was muddling the affairs of India, the honors and emoluments and
privileges--such as they were!--were reserved for the benefit of the
commissioned ranks.

So a transfer to Jailpore did not mean to Jane Emmett ten extra degrees
of heat, the neighborhood of jungle-fever and a brand-new breed of
smells. Those disadvantages, which weighted down the souls of her
employers, were completely overshadowed, so far as she was concerned, by
the knowledge that she was traveling nearer by a hundred leagues or so
to where her Bill was stationed. She was going west; and somewhere
to the west was Bill. Anything was good--fever, and prickly heat, and
smells included--that brought her any nearer him.

There would be no sense in endeavoring to analyze her sensations when
the sudden outburst overwhelmed the inner-guard at Jailpore. The sight
of white women being butchered, and of white men with the blood of their
own women on their hands, selling their lives as dearly as the God
of War would let them in a holocaust of flames, blinded her. It was
probably just a splurge of fire and noise and smoke and blood in her
memory, with one or two details standing out. The only real sensation
that she felt--even when a tall, lean Rajput flung her across his
shoulder, ran with her and dropped her down through a square hole into
stifling darkness--was a longing for Bill Brown, her Bill, the one man
in the world who could surely stop the butchery.

The others prayed. But she refused to pray. She felt angry--not
prayerful! Had she come nine thousand miles, and sacrificed six good
years of youth and youth's heritage, to be cast into a reeking dungeon
and left to die there in the dark? Not if Bill should know of it! And
so she changed her argument, and prayed for Bill. If only Bill
knew--straight-backed, honest, stiff-chinned, uncompromising, plain Bill
Brown. He would change things!

"Oh, Bill! Bill! Bill!" she sobbed. "Dear God, bring Bill to me!"

VII.

When a man knows what is out against him, and from which direction he
may look to meet death, he only needs to be a very ordinary man to
make at least a gallant showing. Gallery or no gallery to watch, given
responsibility and trained men under hire, not one man in a thousand
will fail