nent danger of war with Agpur,
descended from the hills like a whirlwind to take command of the
situation, and incidentally to upset as many as possible of his
brother's arrangements. Having learnt all that Gerrard could tell him
of the circumstances, he took occasion, while his secretary was at work
on the fresh orders he had hastily drafted to Nisbet, the political
officer in charge of the negociations with Sher Singh, to speak on more
personal matters.

"I am sorry to see this continued depression of spirits on your part,
Gerrard. The sin of despondency is one to which I myself am so
conspicuously prone that I dare lose no opportunity of warning others
against it."

"Forgive me, sir. Our conversation has led me to recall things so
vividly----"

"True. But you feel, as you have assured me, that our friend Charteris
fell in a good cause?"

"There could be no better, sir. But if only I could have died instead
of him!"

Sir Edmund frowned. "These things are not in our hands. If
Charteris's work was done, no efforts of yours or mine could have saved
him. If your work is not done, all the powers of hell could not
prevail to bring about your death."

"But his work was not complete, sir. There was so much in him that no
one realised--he had had no opportunity to display it. You and I, and
one other person, have some faint idea of what he really was, but no
one else can possibly know--the world can never know."

Colonel Antony pushed back his papers. "And what then?" he asked
sharply. "How dare you say that his work was not complete because the
world knew nothing of it? The world! The world does not make a man
great, any more than it is the world's recognition that makes his work
valuable. The value of the work lies in the spirit in which it is
done. I tell you"--he spoke as though to himself, with a far-away look
in his eyes--"I have seen something of work and the world's recognition
of it. You know the interest that I take in the history of our people
in India, how my wife and I are always poking and prying among old
manuscripts and records wherever we go. I have found there the
histories of scores of forgotten heroes--men whose names, in any other
service or any other country, would have been inscribed upon the
nation's roll of honour. They marched half across India--hostile
country, every foot of the way--at the head of a few hundred men, and
faced and fought the might of empires at the end.