None of us
touched, barring a bullet in my boot, and two Johnnies slashed on the
cheek. Seems to me as if the gen'lman, Mr. 'Aystoun, was 'it, though."

At the word Andover ran for his quarters, where he found his servant
dressing Lewis's wounded ear. That young man with a face of great
despair was inclining his head over a basin.

"What's the matter, Andy? Don't tell me the show has stopped. I
thought they were game to go on for hours, and I was just coming to join
you."

"They've gone, every mother's son of them. I told you it was comic
opera all along. Seven of them have found the part too much for them,
but the rest have cleared out like smoke. I give it up."

Lewis stared at the speaker, his brain busy with a problem. For a
moment before the fight, and for a little during its progress he had
been serenely happy. He had done something hard and perilous; he had
risked bullets; he had brought authentic news of a real danger. He was
happily at peace with himself; the bland quiet of conscience which he
had not felt for months had given him the vision of a new life. But the
danger had faded away in smoke; and here was Andover with a mystified
face asking its meaning.

"I swear that those fellows never had the least intention of beating us.
There were far too few of them for one thing. They looked like
criminals fighting under sentence, you know, like the Persian fellows.
It was more like some religious ceremony than a fight. The whole thing
is beyond me, but I think no harm's done. Hang it, I wish Holm were
here. He's a depressing beggar, but he takes responsibility off my
shoulders."

The dead men were buried as quickly and decently as the place allowed
of. Things were generally cleaned up, and by noon the little fort was
as spick as if the sound of a rifle had never been heard within its
walls. Lewis and Andover had the midday meal in a sort of gun-room
which looked over the edge of the plateau to a valley in the hills. It
had been arranged and furnished by a former commandant who found in the
view a repetition of the one in a much-loved Highland shooting-box.
Accordingly it was comfortable and homelike beyond the average of
frontier dwellings. Outside a dripping mist had clouded the hills and
chilled the hot air.

The two men smoked silently, knocking out their ashes and refilling with
the regularity of clockwork. Lewis was thinking hard, thinking of the
bitterness of dashed hopes, of self-confidence clutched