never thought that of you, Charley."

Charles cursed aloud. "What have I done to be talked to like this?
Major Buckley has no right to send me away like this, to be branded as
coward through the country side. Ten times over better to be shot than
have such words as these said to me. I shall go back with you."

"That's the talk," said the poor fool. "I thought I wasn't wrong in
you, Charley." And so Charles galloped back with him.

We, in the meantime, had started from the station, ere day was well
broke. Foremost of the company rode Desborough, calm and serene, and on
either side of him Captain Brentwood and Major Buckley. Then came the
Doctor, Sam, Jim, Halbert, and myself; behind us again, five troopers
and the Sergeant. Each man of us all was armed with a sword; and every
man in that company, as it happened, knew the use of that weapon well.
The troopers carried carbines, and all of us carried pistols.

The glare in the east changing from pearly green to golden yellow, gave
notice of the coming sun. One snow peak, Tambo, I think, began to catch
the light, and blaze like another morning star. The day had begun in
earnest, and, as we entered the mouth of the glen to which we were
bound, slanting gleams of light were already piercing the misty gloom,
and lighting up the loftier crags.

A deep, rock-walled glen it was, open and level, though, in the centre,
ran a tangled waving line of evergreen shrubs, marking the course of a
pretty bright creek, which, half hidden by luxuriant vegetation, ran
beside the faint track leading to one of Captain Brentwood's mountain
huts. Along this track we could plainly see the hoof marks of the men
we were after.

It was one of the most beautiful gullies I had ever seen, and I turned
to say so to some one who rode beside me. Conceive my horror at finding
it was Charles Hawker. I turned to him fiercely, and said,--

"Get back, Charles. Go home. You don't know what you are doing, lad."

He defied me. And I was speaking roughly to him again, when there came
a puff of smoke from among the rocks overhead, and down I went, head
over heels. A bullet had grazed my thigh, and killed my horse, who.
throwing me on my head, rendered me HORS DE COMBAT. So that during the
fight which followed, I was sitting on a rock, very sick and very
stupid, a mile from the scene of action.

My catastrophe caused only a temporary stoppage; and, during the
confusion, Charles Hawker was unnoticed. The man w