room below
the watch-tower, and in blasting the road Stalky had blown a hole into
one side of it. Being no one else _but_ Stalky, he'd kept the hole open
for his own ends; and laid poor Everett's body slap over the well of the
stairs that led down to it from the watch-tower. He'd had to move and
replace the corpse every time he used the passage. The Sikhs wouldn't go
near the place, of course. Well, he'd got out of this hole, and dropped
on to the road. Then, in the night _and_ a howling snow-storm, he'd
dropped over the edge of the khud, made his way down to the bottom of
the gorge, forded the nullah, which was half frozen, climbed up on the
other side along a track he'd discovered, and come out on the right
flank of the Khye-Kheens. He had then--listen to this!--crossed over a
ridge that paralleled their rear, walked half a mile behind that, and
come out on the left of their line where the gorge gets shallow and
where there was a regular track between the Malo't and the Khye-Kheen
camps. That was about two in the morning, and, as it turned out, a man
spotted him--a Khye-Kheen. So Stalky abolished him quietly, and left
him--_with_ the Malo't mark on his chest, same as Everett had.

"'I was just as economical as I could be,' Stalky said to us. 'If he'd
shouted I should have been slain. I'd never had to do that kind of thing
but once before, and that was the first time I tried that path. It's
perfectly practicable for infantry, you know.'

"'What about your first man?' I said.

"'Oh, that was the night after they killed Everett, and I went out
lookin' for a line of retreat for my men. A man found me. I abolished
him--_privatim_--scragged him. But on thinkin' it over it occurred to
me that if I could find the body (I'd hove it down some rocks) I might
decorate it with the Malo't mark and leave it to the Khye-Kheens to draw
inferences. So I went out again the next night and did. The Khye-Kheens
are shocked at the Malo'ts perpetratin' these two dastardly outrages
after they'd sworn to sink all bleed feuds. I lay up behind their
sungars early this morning and watched 'em. They all went to confer
about it at the head of the gorge. Awf'ly annoyed they are. Don't
wonder.' You know the way Stalky drops out his words, one by one."

"My God!" said the Infant, explosively, as the full depth of the
strategy dawned on him.

"Dear-r man!" said McTurk, purring rapturously.

"Stalky stalked," said Tertius. "That's all there is to