fifteen
feet below.

Desmond's eyes had an odd light in them as he turned from the swirling
waters to the impassive face of the man who had saved their lives.

"I do--not--forget," he said with quiet emphasis.

The old Sikh shook his head with a rather uncertain smile.

"True talk, Hazur. I had known it without assurance. Yet was mine own
help no great matter. It was written that my Captain Sahib should not
die thus!"

"That may be," Desmond answered gravely, for he had been strangely
upheld by the same conviction. "Yet there be also--these others. In my
thinking it is no small _matter_ that, except for your quickness of
mind and hearing, forty-four good men and horses would now be at the
mercy of that torrent. But this is no time for words. It still remains
to reach Kohat before sundown."

The sun was slipping behind the hills, with the broad smile of a
tyrant who fully enjoys the joke, when Desmond drew up before his own
verandah and slid to the ground.

"Thank God that's over!" he muttered audibly. But he did not at once
enter the house. His first care, as always, was for the horse he rode;
and with him it was no mere case of the "merciful man," but of sheer
love for that unfailing servant of the human race.

He accompanied Badshah Pasand to the stable, superintended the removal
of his saddle, and looked him carefully all over. That done, he issued
explicit orders for his treatment and feeding: the great charger--as
though fully aware of his master's solicitude,--nuzzling a
mouse-coloured nose against his shoulder the while.

Arrived in the comparative coolness of the hall, he shouted for a
drink, and a bath. Then, turning towards the drawing-room, promised
himself a few minutes blessed relaxation in the depths of his
favourite chair.

But passing between the gold-coloured curtains he saw that which
checked his advance, and banished all thought of relaxation from his
brain.

Harry Denvil--whose buoyancy and simplicity of heart had led Desmond
to christen him the Boy--sat alone at Evelyn's bureau, his head
between his hands, despair in every line of his figure.

Desmond regarded him thoughtfully, marvelling that the sounds of his
own arrival should have passed unheard. Then he went forward, and laid
his hand on the Boy's shoulder.

"Harry! I don't seem to recognise _you_ in that attitude. Anything
seriously wrong?"

Denvil started, and revealed a face of dogged dejection.

"You here?" he said lis