the opening of the day-eye in the east. When they
leave him, beautiful, and stern, and calm in that deep slumber from which
only the Angel with the Trumpet may awaken him, and pass out between the
curtains, the dark, short officer who was on the lookout when the Doctor
came, stands very pale and muddy, and steaming with damp, waiting to
report. And two troopers of the Irregulars, wet and muddy and steaming
too, are waiting also, just inside the tarpaulins of the outer doorway.
And she is not there.

A few rapid words, an exclamation from the Chief, shaken for once out of
his steely composure, and quivering from head to foot with mingled rage
and grief:

"My God, how unutterably horrible!"

Saxham shoulders his way into the ring of white faces that have gathered
about the dark little muddy officer.

"What has happened to Miss Mildare----?"

The little officer answers, panting:

"The Sisters could not make her understand. She----"

The Chief speaks for him:

"She had been previously stunned by the shock of--a terrible calamity."

"What calamity?"

"The Mother-Superior has been killed. Two of the Sisters and Miss Mildare
found her in the Convent chapel. They got there before evening. She must
have been dead some hours. She had been shot through the lungs."

"By a stray bullet?"

"By a bullet from a revolver, fired close enough to scorch the clothes.
Foul murder, and by God who saw it done----"

The lean clenched hand, thrown upwards in a savage gesture, the blazing
eyes, the livid, furrowed face, the writhen mouth, the furious, jarring
voice, leave little doubt of the vengeance that will be wreaked when he
shall track down the murderer. He wheels abruptly, and goes to the
telephone. The swift, imperative orders volt from fort to fort; the
circuit of vigilance is made complete, the human bloodhounds unleashed
upon the trail, in a few instants, thanks to the buzzing wire that brings
the mouth of a man to the ear of another across a void of miles.

But Bough, primed with knowledge as to which are dummy rifle-pits and
which are real, aided by acquaintance with the ground, and covered by that
wuthering night of storm, has already pierced the lines. Subsequently that
excellent Afrikander, Mr. Van Busch, rejoins Brounckers' bright boy at
Tweipans, with information that decides the date of Schenk Eybel's Feint
from the East.

L

She had gone about her Master's business all Monday, calm and composed,
a