was dark by the time we finished, and Stalky, always serene, said:
'You command now. I don't suppose you mind my taking any action I may
consider necessary to reprovision the fort?' I said, 'Of course not,'
and then the lamp blew out. So Tertius and I had to climb down the tower
steps (we didn't want to stay with Everett) and got back to our men.
Stalky had gone off--to count the stores, I supposed. Anyhow, Tertius
and I sat up in case of a rush (they were plugging at us pretty
generally, you know), relieving each other till the mornin'.

"Mornin' came. No Stalky. Not a sign of him. I took counsel with his
senior native officer--a grand, white-whiskered old chap--Rutton Singh,
from Jullunder-way. He only grinned, and said it was all right. Stalky
had been out of the fort twice before, somewhere or other, accordin' to
him. He said Stalky 'ud come back unchipped, and gave me to understand
that Stalky was an invulnerable _Guru_ of sorts. All the same, I put the
whole command on half rations, and set 'em to pickin' out loopholes.

"About noon there was no end of a snow-storm, and the enemy stopped
firing. We replied gingerly, because we were awfully short of
ammunition. Don't suppose we fired five shots an hour, but we generally
got our man. Well, while I was talking with Rutton Singh I saw Stalky
coming down from the watch-tower, rather puffy about the eyes, his
poshteen coated with claret-colored ice.

"'No trustin' these snow-storms,' he said. 'Nip out quick and snaffle
what you can get. There's a certain amount of friction between the
Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts just now.'

"I turned Tertius out with twenty Pathans, and they bucked about in the
snow for a bit till they came on to a sort of camp about eight hundred
yards away, with only a few men in charge and half a dozen sheep by
the fire. They finished off the men, and snaffled the sheep and as much
grain as they could carry, and came back. No one fired a shot at 'em.
There didn't seem to be anybody about, but the snow was falling pretty
thick.

"'That's good enough,' said Stalky when we got dinner ready and he was
chewin' mutton-kababs off a cleanin' rod. 'There's no sense riskin' men.
They're holding a pow-wow between the Khye-Kheens and the Malo'ts at
the head of the gorge. I don't think these so-called coalitions are much
good.'

"Do you know what that maniac had done? Tertius and I shook it out of
him by instalments. There was an underground granary cellar-