eful red envelope awaiting him; and broke the seal with a
shaking hand.

"Crisis over. Condition more hopeful. Will wire Jhung."

"Thank God!" he muttered, choking down a lump that had risen in his
throat. Then, elbowing his way back to where Honor and Lenox stood guard
over a disordered pile of luggage, he thrust the paper into her hand.

"We'll bring him round between us, you and I," he said, as she looked up;
and she nodded contentedly, her eyes deep in his. He could no longer
regret having given way to her; and she knew it!

They were not the only English passengers in the Mooltan train. Two Dera
subalterns, who had fled posthaste from Simla, stood smoking outside
their carriage:--Hodson, the 'slacker' of the Battery, a small sallow
individual, with heavy-lidded eyes, and a disagreeable mouth; and Major
Olliver's 'sub,' Bobby Nixon, who answered indiscriminately to half a
dozen names, but was officially registered as The Chicken, a tribute to
his cheerful lack of wisdom, worldly or otherworldly, and to the sparse
crop of 'down' that surmounted an extensive freckled face, and shadowed a
mouth whose one beauty lay in its readiness to smile capaciously upon the
world at large.

As Honor and Lenox came towards him, the said mouth screwed itself into a
low whistle.

"Great Scott, Mrs Desmond, . . but this is flagrant heroism! Who'd have
dreamt of meeting _you_ here?"

"A pleasant surprise, I hope," she asked, smiling, as they shook hands.

"Why, of course it's always good to see you," the boy answered, looking
upon her with frank admiration. "And you bet we're proud to have our
ladies facing the music with us. But still . . cholera's cholera; and it
looks like a record year. They've got it hot and strong at Mian Mir.
Two of the Norfolks came down the hill with us, swearing like Billy O.
Been up less than a fortnight; and there's a masked ball on at the Club
to-morrow. Oh Lord, it's a lively country! Poor old Hodson only got a
week in Simla; and he has fever on him still."

Lenox glanced quizzically at the man he desired to weed out of his
beloved Battery by the simple means of making him work.

"Hard luck," he remarked; a suspicion of irony in his tone. And Hodson,
anathematising under his breath India in general, and the Frontier in
particular, strolled off down the platform, head in air. There was
little love lost between him and a commandant for whom work was the
backbone of life.

Just t