her as though flesh and
blood, and she was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried
herself in her father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in
the troop, and for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially
warm place.

"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start,
with the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love
you, Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only
long afterwards that "gri-gri" meant "grey-grey," to signify that she
called him after his grizzled hairs.

What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew.
Jim regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his
strength, his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy
was the charm he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once,
when she was ill, he had suffered as he had never done before in his
life. He could not sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one
in a dream. When his struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he
kept saying over her name to himself, as though she could help him. Yet
always it was Sally's hand he held in the darkest hours, in his brutal
moments; for in this fight between appetite and will there are moments
when only the animal seems to exist, and the soul disappears in the
glare and gloom of the primal emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky
sixpence," but he called Sally his "guinea-girl."

From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
hours, some innate optimism and humour held him steady in his fight. It
was not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of
an appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile
upon their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the
aftermath of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow
of experience. He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his
figure, the deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force
of a singular personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a
long reflective look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers
present. His lips smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have
seen, I have suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been
loved under the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden
hours, but not peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace."

In the greater, de