hair; and the loyal loving soul of her shone
like a light through the seriousness of her eyes.

And as he watched, hope--that dies harder than any quality of the
heart--rose up in him and prevailed. A day must come when this
execrable unknown would no longer stand between them; when she would
come to him of her own accord, as she had promised;--and he could wait
for years, without impatience, on the bare chance of such a
consummation.

But at this point a growing change in her riveted his attention--a
change such as only the eyes of a lover could detect and interpret
aright. She sat almost facing him; and at the first had looked towards
him, from time to time, certain of his sympathy with the interest that
held her. But before five minutes were out he had been forgotten as
though he were not; and by how all else about her was forgotten also.
Not her spirit only, but her whole heart glowed in her eyes; and Paul
Wyndham, standing watchful and silent in the shadow, became abruptly
aware that the execrable unknown--whom he had been hating for the past
fortnight with all the strength of a strong nature--was the man he
loved better than anything else on earth.

The Ressaldar was nearing the crowning-point of his story now. Honor
listened spellbound as he told her of the breathless rush up that
rugged incline, and of the sight that greeted them after scaling the
mighty staircase of rock.

"None save the fleetest among us could keep pace with the Captain
Sahib, wounded as he was," the Sikh was saying, when Wyndham, with a
hideous jar, came back to reality. "But God gave me strength, though I
have fifty years well told, so that I came not far behind; and even as
Denvil Sahib fell, with his face to the earth, at the Captain Sahib's
feet, he turned upon the Afridi devils like a lion among wolves, and
smote three of them to hell before a man could say, 'It lightens.' Yet
came there one pig of a coward behind him, Miss Sahib. Only, by God's
mercy, I also was there, to give him such greeting as he deserved with
my Persian sword, that hath passed from father to son these hundred
and fifty years, and hath never done better work than in averting the
hand of death from my Captain Sahib Bahadur, whom God will make
Jungi-Lat-Sahib[29] before the end of his days! For myself I am an old
man, and of a truth I covet no higher honour than this that hath
befallen me, in rendering twice, without merit, such good service to
the Border. Nay,