ame instant the old beggar at the foot of the palace steps
sprang panther-like from his crouching position to hurl himself bodily
at something that skulked in the shadows beyond him.

The marvellous agility of the action, the unerring precision with
which he pounced upon his prey, above all, the voice that had yelled
in execration, sent such a stab of amazed recognition through Muriel
that she stood for a second as one petrified.

But the next instant all her senses were pricked into alertness by a
revolver-shot. Another came, and yet another. They were fighting below
like tigers--two men in native dress, swaying, straining, struggling,
not three yards from where she stood.

She never fully remembered afterwards how she came to realise that
Nick--Nick himself--was there before her in the flesh, fighting like
a demon, fighting as she had seen him fight once long ago when every
nerve in her body had been strung to agonised repulsion.

She felt no repulsion now--no shrinking of any sort, only a wild
anguish of fear for his sake that drove her like a mad creature down
the intervening steps, that sent her flashing between him and his
adversary, that inspired her to wrench away the smoking revolver from
the murderous hand that gripped it.

She went through those awful moments as a woman possessed, blindly
obeying the compelling force, goaded by sheer, primaeval instinct to
protect her own. It was but a conflict of seconds, but while it lasted
she was untrammelled by any doubts or hesitations. She was sublimely
sure of herself. She was superbly unafraid.

When it was over, when men crowded round and dragged her enemy back,
when the pressing need was past, her courage fell from her like a
mantle. She sank down upon the steps, a trembling, hysterical woman,
and began to cry.

Some one bent over her, some one whispered soothing words, some one
drew the revolver out of her weak grasp. Looking up, she saw the old
native beggar upon whom she had thought to bestow her charity.

"Oh, Nick!" she gasped. "Nick!" And there stopped in sudden misgiving.
Was this grotesque figure indeed Nick? Could it be--this man who had
sat at the Residency gates for weeks, this man to whom she had so
often tossed an alms?

Her brain had begun to reel, but she clung to the central idea, as one
in deep waters clinging to a spar.

"Speak to me!" she entreated. "Only speak to me!"

But before he could answer, Bobby Fraser pushed suddenly forward