long ago. And"--for a second her voice
faltered--"I--I feel safer here. Please let me stay."

"Very well." He could not bear to send her away. "But you must promise
to keep as far as possible out of range. We can't afford any casualties,
you know."

"I promise," she said very quietly; and he knew she would obey his
injunctions implicitly.

The next moment Garnett rushed into the room, his blue eyes alight with
a most warrior-like flame.

"See what's up, Anstice? Good--I guessed you'd not be caught napping.
I'll get back now--there's going to be a gorgeous scrap in a minute.
Mrs. Cheniston, are you all right there?"

"Quite, thanks." Her calm voice reassured him; and he dashed out of the
room without further parley, while Anstice and Hassan waited, tensely,
their revolvers in readiness, for the moment to open their defence.

It was not yet day; and in the grey gloom it was difficult to
distinguish the nature of any object which was not close at hand; but
Anstice made out that the approaching Bedouins intended to scramble up
to the windows by use of their scaling ladders; and his face wore an
unusually grim expression as the flying moments passed.

Ah! The first tribesman to reach the level of the window gave an
exultant yell, as though he saw his foe already within his grasp; and on
that shout of triumph his desert-born soul was sped to whatever haven
awaited it. For Anstice's revolver had spoken; and the swarthy Bedouin
fell headlong to the earth, shot, unerringly, through the heart.

Anstice heard Iris give a faint gasp at his side; but now his blood was
up and he had no time to reassure even the one beloved woman. Something
strange, unexpected, had happened to him. Suddenly he too was primitive
man, even as these desert men were magnificently primitive. Gone was all
the veneer of civilization, the humanity which bids a man respect a
fellow-creature's life. He was no longer the educated, travelled man of
the world, who earned his living in honourable and decorous ways. He was
the cave-dweller, the man of another and more barbaric age, who defended
his stronghold because it held his woman, the woman for whom he would
fight to the very end, and count his life well spent if it were yielded
up in her service. But he did not mean to die. He meant to live--and
since that implied the death of these savages who clamoured without,
then let red death stalk between them, and decide to whom he would award
the blood-drippi