l bottle of thickened ink and pair of rusty
pens. She sat down to her intention as if she dared not let it cool; she
wrote her message swiftly, she had worded it on the way.

'To Mrs. Innes, Dak Bungalow, Solon.

'From M. Anderson, Simla.

'Frederick Prendergast died on January 7th, at Sing Sing. Your letter
considered confidential if you return. Prendergast left no will.

'M. Anderson.'

'Send this "urgent," Babu,' she said to the clerk, 'and repeat it to the
railway station, Kalka. Shall I fill up another form? No? Very well.'

At the door she turned and came back.

'It is now eleven o'clock,' she said. 'The person I am telegraphing to
is on her way down to get tonight's train at Kalka. I am hoping to catch
her half-way at Solon. Do you think I can?'

'I think so, madam. Oyess! It is the custom to stop at Solon for tiffin.
The telegram can arrive there. All urgent telegram going very quick.'

'And in any case,' said Madeline, 'it can not fail to reach her at
Kalka?'

'Not possible to fail, madam.'

'She will have her chance,' she said to herself, on her way to the post
office to order her tonga. And with a little nauseated shudder at the
thought of the letter in her pocket, she added, 'It is amazing. I
should have thought her too good a woman of business!' After which she
concentrated her whole attention upon the necessities of departure. Her
single immediate apprehension was that Horace Innes might, by some magic
of circumstances, be transported back into Simla before she could get
out of it. That such a contingency was physically impossible made no
difference to her nerves, and to the last Brookes was the hurrying
victim of unnecessary promptings.

The little rambling hotel of Kalka, where the railway spreads out over
the plains, raises its white-washed shelter under the very walls of the
Himalayas. Madeline, just arrived, lay back in a long wicker chair on
the veranda, and looked up at them as they mounted green and grey and
silent under the beating of the first of the rains. Everywhere was a
luxury of silence, the place was steeped in it, drowned in it. A feeding
cow flicked an automatic tail under a tree. Near the low mud wall that
strolled irresolutely between the house and the hills leaned a bush
with a few single pink roses; their petals were floating down under
the battering drops. A draggled bee tried to climb to a dry place on a
pillar of the veranda. Above all, the hills, immediate, towering,