y eyes to the horizon, and nodded.

When a man is consumed with thirst, and scorched to the bone, by five
hours of riding through a furnace seven times heated in the teeth of a
blistering wind, he is chary of speech; and the two rode forward in
silence--mere specks upon the emptiness of earth and sky--keeping
their horses to the long-distance canter that kills neither man nor
beast. A detachment of forty sabres followed in their wake; and the
rhythmical clatter rang monotonously in their ears.

The speck on the horizon was an outpost--a boundary mark of
empire,--where a little party of men watched, night and day, for the
least sign of danger from the illusive quiet of the hills.

It is these handfuls of men, natives of India all, stationed in stone
watch-towers twenty miles apart along the Border, who keep the gateway
of India barred; and who will keep it barred against all intruders for
all time. The unobtrusive strength of India's Frontier amazes the
new-comer. But only those who have spent their best years in its
service know the full price paid for the upkeep of that same strength
in hardship, unremitting toil, and the lives of picked men.

As the riders neared the post its outline showed, stern and clear-cut,
against the blue of the sky. A single circular room, loop-holed and
battlemented, set upon an outward sloping base of immense solidity,
and surrounded by a massive stone wall:--a tower in which ten men
could hold their own against five hundred. The look-out sentry,
sighting the detachment afar off, gave the word to his companions, who
lowered the ladder that served them for staircase; and when Desmond's
party drew rein the door in the wall stood open to receive them.

During the halt that followed, the men, having fed and watered their
horses, took what rest they might in patches of burning shadow within
the wall. Though the sun-saturated masonry breathed fire, it served to
shelter them from the withering wind that scours the Border at this
fiery time of year.

Desmond, who had breakfasted five hours earlier on stale bread and a
few sardines, lunched, with small appetite, on biscuits and a slab of
chocolate, and moistened his parched throat with tepid whisky-and-water.
Quenching his thirst was an achievement past hoping for till Kohat
itself should be reached.

He had left the station with his detachment early on the previous day;
had relieved four outposts between dawn and dusk, covering eighty
miles