just touched the
hand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he had
been detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.

"Where is Rydal himself?"

He asked the question carelessly, dropping the pulseless wrist.

"Who can tell?" said the Rev. Francis Heath.

"He'd better keep out of the way," continued the doctor. "I believe
there's a police warrant out for him. Hartley spoke of it to-night. She
will be gone before morning, and a good job for her."

The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the 30th,
and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that boomed and
crashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.

II

TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH

Half-way up a low hill rise on the far side of the Mangadone Cantonment
was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police. It was a tidy,
well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things
himself and who was well served by competent servants. Hartley had
reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of
build and entirely sensible and practical of mind. He was spoken of as
"sound" and "capable," for it is thus we describe men with a word, and
his mind was adjusted so as to give room for only one idea at a time. He
was convinced that he was tactful to a fault, nothing had ever shaken
him in this belief, and his personal courage was the courage of the
British lion. Hartley was popular and on friendly and confidential terms
with everybody.

Mangadone, like most other places in the East, was as full of cliques as
a book is of words, but Hartley regarded them not at all. Popularity was
his weakness and his strength, and he swam in all waters and was invited
everywhere. Mrs. Wilder, who knew exactly who to treat with distant
condescension and who to ignore entirely, invariably included him in
her intimate dinners, and the Chief Commissioner, also a bachelor,
invited him frequently and discussed many topics with him as the wine
circled. Even Craven Joicey, the banker, who made very few acquaintances
and fewer intimates, was friendly with Hartley; one of those odd,
unlikely friendships that no one understands.

The week following upon the thunder-storm had been a week of grey skies
over an acid-green world, and even Hartley became conscious that there
is something mournful about a tropical country without a sun in the sky
a