s old pompous manner--he exclaimed:

"To the Guards' Club, Waterloo Place! Do it in twenty minutes, driver,
and the half sovereign is yours. Go by way of Piccadilly; it's the near
cut."

A moment later he added: "I'll be late. What beastly luck!"

Then a swift change passed over his face.

"Ha! ha! There's the light again," he cried exultantly. "Look,
Carrington, look----" His lips trembled over the unfinished sentence,
and without another word he dropped back on the logs and lay there
perfectly motionless.

This was the last thing that Guy remembered.

The torch still burned beside him, and the raft plunged on its dizzy
course, but his mind was wandering far away, and the past was being
lived over again.

He was riding through London streets, dining with his old friends at the
club, pulling a skiff over the placid current of the Thames, shooting
quail on his brother's estate, dancing at a ball at Government House,
Calcutta, marching through Indian jungles at the head of his men,
plotting the capture of the Rajah, Nana Sahib, in far-away Burma--thus
the merciful past stole his mind away from the horrors of the present,
and he alternately smiled or shuddered as he recalled some pleasant
association or stern reminiscence of peril.

So the hours passed on. The torch faded and dimmed, burned to a charred
ember, and then went out.

The water hissed and boiled, crashing on rocks and shoals, beating its
fury against the barren shores, and rushing down the narrow channel at
an angle that was frightful and appalling.

Guided by an unseen power, the frail raft rose and fell with the
current, whirling round and round like an eggshell, creaking, groaning,
and straining at its bonds, like a fettered giant; but the wretched
castaways, sprawled in careless attitude across the logs, heard nothing,
knew nothing--simply lay with their pallid faces turned toward the
blackness and the gloom overhead.

Ah, how pitiful! If they could only have known what was close at hand,
fresh life would have flowed into their wasted veins. They would have
gone mad with joy.

The roar of the water had now become softened and less violent. The
rocks had disappeared, the river slipped like an avalanche through the
fast narrowing channel, and at such a prodigious speed that a cold blast
of air whistled about the raft.

Chutney, still propped against the canoe, caught its full effect on his
face. It stirred up the flickering spark of life with