up in my face. He
swallowed a great gulp of surprise. His breath came and went. He
raised himself on his elbows and stared at me with a fixed stare.
"Cumberledge!" he cried; "Cumberledge! Come back to life, then! They
told me you were dead! And here you are, Cumberledge!"

"WHO told you I was dead?" I asked, sternly.

He stared at me, still in a dazed way. He was more than half comatose.
"Your guide, Ram Das," he answered at last, half incoherently. "He came
back by himself. Came back without you. He swore to me he had seen
all your throats cut in Tibet. He alone had escaped. The Buddhists had
massacred you."

"He told you a lie," I said, shortly.

"I thought so. I thought so. And I sent him back for confirmatory
evidence. But the rogue has never brought it." He let his head drop on
his rude pillow heavily. "Never, never brought it!"

I gazed at him, full of horror. The man was too ill to hear me, too ill
to reason, too ill to recognise the meaning of his own words, almost.
Otherwise, perhaps, he would hardly have expressed himself quite so
frankly. Though to be sure he had said nothing to criminate himself in
any way; his action might have been due to anxiety for our safety.

I fixed my glance on him long and dubiously. What ought I to do next?
As for Sebastian, he lay with his eyes closed, half oblivious of my
presence. The fever had gripped him hard. He shivered, and looked
helpless as a child. In such circumstances, the instincts of my
profession rose imperative within me. I could not nurse a case properly
in this wretched hut. The one thing to be done was to carry the patient
down to our camp in the valley. There, at least, we had air and pure
running water.

I asked a few questions from the retired gentleman as to the possibility
of obtaining sufficient bearers in the village. As I supposed, any
number were forthcoming immediately. Your Nepaulese is by nature a beast
of burden; he can carry anything up and down the mountains, and spends
his life in the act of carrying.

I pulled out my pencil, tore a leaf from my note-book, and scribbled a
hasty note to Hilda: "The invalid is--whom do you think?--Sebastian!
He is dangerously ill with some malignant fever. I am bringing him down
into camp to nurse. Get everything ready for him." Then I handed it
over to a messenger, found for me by the retired gentleman, to carry to
Hilda. My host himself I could not spare, as he was my only interpreter.

In a couple of