divided the night between it to mount guard, that section of it off duty
sleeping in the open--arms ready to hand.

Their leader appeared to be made of iron. Stirring events, peril,
fatigue, had been crowded into his experience since his last night's
sleep, four nights ago, but all seemed to go for nothing. He was here,
there, everywhere, the night through, seeming to need no sleep. And
with the first sign of a glimmer of dawn, the whole force was up and
under arms, waiting and ready, for that is the hour--when sleep is
heaviest, and vigilance in consequence relaxed--that the untiring savage
favours for making his attack. But no such attack was made, and the
night passed quietly and without alarm, as we have said.

"Dash it all, Lamont! Why don't you turn in, man? You're overdoing it,
you know. You haven't had forty winks for about four nights. You'll
bust up all of a sudden, and at the wrong time, if you don't watch it.
How's that?"

Thus Peters, what time the tired and worn-out men were simply subsiding
on the bare ground, and dropping off into log-like slumber the moment
they touched it; and that under the glorious blue of the heavens and the
sweeping gold of the newly risen sun.

"I couldn't sleep, Peters--no, not if I were paid to," was the answer.
"But I'm going to see if I can scare up a tub and a razor. At present I
must be looking the most desperate ruffian you could _not_ wish to meet
in a lonely lane."

Peters looked after him and shook his head, slowly and mournfully.

"He's got it," he said to himself. "By the Lord, he's got it. I could
see that when, like the blithering ass I am, I interrupted them that
evening. No, it isn't sheer aptitude for tough campaigning that keeps
his peepers open when nobody else can keep theirs."

Peters was absolutely right. His friend and comrade was in a state of
mental exaltation that reacted physically. He could hardly believe in
his happiness, even yet. How had it come about? In his pride and
cynicism it might have been months before he would have brought matters
to the testing point--it is even conceivable it might have been never.
Yet, all unpremeditated and on the spur of the moment, he had done so--
and now, and now--

Good Heavens! life was too golden henceforward, and as the flaming wheel
of the sun rose higher and higher in the unflecked blue, the glory of
the newborn day seemed to Lamont to attune itself to the glow of
happiness and peace w