while, but it was
evident to them both that her strength was fast failing. And presently
he stopped again, and without a word lifted her in his arms. She
gasped a protest to which he made no response. His arms compassed
her like steel, making her feel helpless as an infant. He was limping
himself, she noticed; yet he bore her strongly, without faltering,
sure-footed as a mountain goat over the broken ground, till he found
at length what he deemed a safe halting-place in a clump of stunted
trees.

The sunrise revealed a native village standing among rice and cotton
fields in the valley below them.

"I shall have to go foraging," Nick said.

But Muriel's nerves that had been tottering on the verge of
collapse for some time here broke down completely. She clung to him
hysterically and entreated him not to leave her.

"I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" she kept reiterating. "If you go,
I must go too. I can't--I can't stay here alone."

He gave way instantly, seeing that she was in a state of mind that
bordered upon distraction, and that he could not safely leave her. He
sat down beside her, therefore, making her as comfortable as he could;
and she presently slept with her head upon his shoulder. It was but
a broken slumber, however, and she awoke from it crying wildly that
a man was being murdered--murdered--murdered--and imploring him with
agonised tears to intervene.

He quieted her with a steady insistence that gained its end, though
she crouched against him sobbing for some time after. As the sun rose
higher her fever increased, but she remained conscious and suffering
intensely, all through the heat of the day. Then, as the evening drew
on, she slipped into a heavy stupor.

It was the opportunity Nick had awaited for hours, and he seized it.
Laying her back in the deep shadow of a boulder, he went swiftly down
into the valley. The last light was passing as he strode through the
village, a gaunt, silent figure in a hillman's dress, a native dagger
in his girdle. Save that he had pulled the _chuddah_ well over his
face, he attempted no concealment.

He glided by a ring of old men seated about a fire, moving like a
shadow through the glare. They turned to view him, but he had already
passed with the tread of a wolf, and the mud wall of one of the
cottages hid him from sight.

Into this hut he dived as though some instinct guided him. He paid no
heed to a woman on a string-bedstead with a baby at her breast,