ood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager
hands on it.

"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered,
buttoning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a
side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among the
_debris_, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.

"Better leave you some for the women,--if you can get 'em to drink it
diluted with a trifle of rain!--There now, I'm off. For God's sake,
Colonel, look sharp after me."

Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the
first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he
sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him
in full the approval he craved; and, for the space of a few seconds,
their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any
communion of the lips.

Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.

Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let
himself down by his hands on to a tumbled mass of boulders, and began
his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,--who stood at the
_khud's_ edge peering into space, ears and tail dumbly demanding
explanation,--lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and
only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from
joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and
Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a _sais_; and after
much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.

Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher
from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,--drenched and
evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its
construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's
brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in
the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the
horse-play of lightning and thunder.

But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes
only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her
side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's
open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded,
and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took
convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and
this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of God's
unive