made my
peace with my Maker, and I'd like to wait quietly on His call. I'll
play a game of Patience to pass the time.'

He would take no denial, so we drew again, and the lot fell to Sandy.

'If I'm the last to go,' he said, 'I promise I don't miss. Stumm won't
be long in following me.'

He shook hands with his cheery smile, and he and the Companion slipped
over the parapet in the final shadows before dawn.

Blenkiron spread his Patience cards on a flat rock, and dealt out the
Double Napoleon. He was perfectly calm, and hummed to himself his only
tune. For myself I was drinking in my last draught of the hill air.
My contentment was going. I suddenly felt bitterly loath to die.

Something of the same kind must have passed through Blenkiron's head.
He suddenly looked up and asked, 'Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see
anybody coming?'

I stood close to the parapet, watching every detail of the landscape as
shown by the revealing daybreak. Up on the shoulders of the
Palantuken, snowdrifts lipped over the edges of the cliffs. I wondered
when they would come down as avalanches. There was a kind of croft on
one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to
curl. Stumm's gunners were awake and apparently holding council. Far
down on the main road a convoy was moving--I heard the creak of the
wheels two miles away, for the air was deathly still.

Then, as if a spring had been loosed, the world suddenly leaped to a
hideous life. With a growl the guns opened round all the horizon.
They were especially fierce to the south, where a _rafale_ beat as I
had never heard it before. The one glance I cast behind me showed the
gap in the hills choked with fumes and dust.

But my eyes were on the north. From Erzerum city tall tongues of flame
leaped from a dozen quarters. Beyond, towards the opening of the
Euphrates glen, there was the sharp crack of field-guns. I strained
eyes and ears, mad with impatience, and I read the riddle.

'Sandy,' I yelled, 'Peter has got through. The Russians are round the
flank. The town is burning. Glory to God, we've won, we've won!'

And as I spoke the earth seemed to split beside me, and I was flung
forward on the gravel which covered Hilda von Einem's grave.

As I picked myself up, and to my amazement found myself uninjured, I
saw Blenkiron rubbing the dust out of his eyes and arranging a
disordered card. He had stopped humming, and was singing aloud: