e hill was successfully cleared, and you may imagine the
welcome we gave Theo, when at last he got back to camp, with his
uniform in ribbons and his helmet gone. I don't know when I've heard
such cheering from natives. Besides saving the Jemadar, the success of
the whole affair had been due to his leadership and example. He
wouldn't hear of it, of course; but when the account came out in the
'Gazette,' he found himself belauded from start to finish, with a V.C.
conferred on him to crown all. One couldn't say much to him even then.
He's not the sort."

Honor's cheeks were on fire, her eyes like stars; and it is
characteristic of Paul Wyndham that he noted these facts without a
shadow of envy.

"The genuine modesty of genius," she said; and Paul bent his head in
acquiescence.

"Theo's genius is of the best kind," he added; "it is genius of
character, of a wide sympathetic understanding of men and things. And
on the Frontier, Miss Meredith, that sort of understanding counts for
more than anywhere else in the country. We control our fellows here as
much by love and respect as by mere discipline. Get a native to love
you, and believe in you, and you are sure of him for good. That is why
officers like Theo and your brother, who hold their men's hearts in
their hands, are, without exaggeration, the pillars on which the
safety of India rests. It is when the cry of 'Jehad' runs like fire
along the Border, and the fidelity of our troops is being tampered
with, that we get the clearest proof of this. At such times pay,
pension, and Orders of Merit have no more power to restrain a Pathan
than a thread of cotton round his ankle. But there's just one thing he
will _not_ do--he will not desert, in his hour of need, an officer
whom he has found to be just, upright, and fearless, and whom he has
praised as a hero to his own people."

Wyndham's unwonted eloquence, and the glow of feeling underlying it,
lifted the girl to fresh heights of enthusiasm.

"Oh, how glad I am to have come here!" she said with sudden fervour.
"Captain Desmond was talking in much the same strain just before we
started; and one cannot listen to him without catching the fire of his
enthusiasm, which is surely the best kind of fire that ever came down
from heaven!"

Just as she finished speaking, Desmond himself strode up to them.

"I say, Paul, old man," he remonstrated, "isn't it some one else's
turn for an innings by this time? Mrs Conolly is keen to hav