The
Advanced-Guard

Fifty years ago the great port of Bab-us-Sahel was in its infancy. The modern ranges of wharfs and breakwaters were represented by a single half-finished pier, and vessels still discharged their passengers and cargo a mile from shore, to the imminent peril of life and property. The province of Khemistan had only recently come under British rule, by an operation which was variously described as “the most shameless piece of iniquity ever perpetrated,” and “the inevitable working of the laws of right and justice”; and the iron-willed, iron-handed old soldier who had perpetrated the iniquity and superintended the working of the laws was determined to open up the country from the river to the desert and beyond. His enemies were numerous and loud-voiced and near at hand; his friends, with the exception of his own subordinates, few and far away; but he had one advantage more common in those days than these, a practically free hand. Under “the execrable tyranny of a military despotism,” the labour of pacification and the construction of public works went on simultaneously, and although the Bombay papers shrieked themselves hoarse in denouncing Sir Henry Lennox, and danced war-dances over his presumably prostrate form, no one in Khemistan was a penny the worse—a fact which did not tend to mollify the angry passions concerned.

The wand of the Eastern enchanter was not in the possession of the nineteenth-century empire-builder, even though he might be the great little man whom the natives called the Padishah, and (under their breath) the Brother of Satan; and despite the efforts of a small army of engineers, the growth of the new seaport was but slow. Yet, though the native town was still obnoxious to sight and smell, and the broad roads of the symmetrically planned cantonments were ankle-deep in dust and sometimes knee-deep in sand, there was one improvement to which General Lennox had been obliged to postpone even his beloved harbour-works, and this was the seaside drive, where his little colony of exiles might meet and condole with one another in the cooler hours of the day. Every one rode or drove there morning and evening, exchanging the latest local gossip on ordinary occasions, and news from home on the rare mail-days. It was most unusual to see a man not in uniform in the drive, for mufti was a word which had no place in the General’s vocabulary; and it was even whispered that his well-known detestation of civilians sprang from the fact that he could not arbitrarily clap them into scarlet tunics. As for the ladies, their skirts were of a generous amplitude, although the crinoline proper had not yet made its appearance; but instead of the close bonnets universal in fashionable Europe, they wore lace and muslin caps, as their ancestresses had done since the first Englishwoman stepped ashore in India. The more thrifty-minded guarded their complexions with native umbrellas of painted calico; but there were few who did not exhibit one of the miniature parasols, very long in the handle and very small in the circumference, which were usual at home.

The one interest which all the promenaders had in common was the daily recurring uncertainty whether General Lennox would take his ride late or early. He never failed to put in an appearance and bestow paternal greetings on his flock, who all knew him and each other, keeping a vigilant eye open the while for any newly arrived subaltern who might have broken his unwritten law; but when he was in good time he made a kind of royal progress, saying a word or two to a man here and there, and saluting each lady in turn with the noble courtesy which went out with the last of the Peninsular heroes. He was specially early one evening, able even to notice absentees, and he asked more than once with some anxiety why Lady Haigh was not there—a question which excited the wrathful contempt of ladies of higher official rank. Lady Haigh was only a subaltern’s wife, in spite of her title; but she was amusing, a quality which has its attractions for a grizzled warrior burdened with many responsibilities. However, one lady was able to tell him that Sir Dugald Haigh had only just come in with Major Keeling from their trip up-country, and another added that she believed a friend of Lady Haigh’s had arrived that morning by the steamer,—there was only one steamer that plied between Bombay and Bab-us-Sahel,—and the General was satisfied. Life and death were not so widely separated in Bab-us-Sahel as in more favoured places; and it happened not unfrequently that a man might be riding in the drive one evening, and be carried to his grave the next.

The Haighs’ house stood on the outskirts of the cantonments. It was a small white-washed bungalow, remarkable for the extreme neatness of its compound, and the pathetic attempts at gardening which were evident wherever any shade might be hoped for. Very widely did it differ from its nearest neighbour, a rambling, tumble-down cluster of buildings inhabited by a riotous colony of bachelors, who were popularly alleged to ride all day and drink all night. In view of the amount of work exacted by Sir Henry Lennox from all his subordinates, this was obviously an exaggeration; but the patch of unreclaimed desert which surrounded Bachelors’ Hall, its broken fences, and the jagged heaps of empty bottles here and there, distinguished it sufficiently from the little domain where Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh were conducting what their friends considered a very risky matrimonial experiment. The festive young gentlemen next door lavished a good deal of wonder and pity (as upon a harmless lunatic) upon Sir Dugald. That a man who was hampered by a title and an unproductive Scotch estate should let the latter and carry the former into the Indian army, where it would array all his superiors against him as one man, instead of remaining at home and using title and estate as a bait for an heiress, was strange enough. But that he should proceed further to defy the opinion of those in authority by bringing out a wife—and a plain wife, without money and with a tongue (the bachelors had learnt through an indiscreet lady friend that the bride had dubbed their cheerful establishment “Beer and Skittles”)—seemed to show that he must be absolutely mad. Lady Haigh’s relations, on the other hand, regarded her marriage with trembling joy. Girls with aspirations after higher education were fewer in those days than these, and perplexed families did not know how to deal with them. By sheer hard fighting Elma Wargrave had won leave to study at the newly founded Queen’s College, but her family breathed a sigh of relief when, after less than a year’s work, she announced that she was going to marry Sir Dugald Haigh, whom she had met on a vacation visit. Whatever Elma might take it into her head to do in the future, her husband and not her parents would be responsible, and it would happen at a distance of some thousands of miles. The baronetcy was an undeniable fact, and there was no need to obtrude on people’s attention the other fact that the bridegroom was merely a subaltern in the Company’s artillery. Hence, when the wedding had safely taken place, the parents allowed themselves to rejoice more and tremble less, only hoping that poor Sir Dugald would not find he had undertaken more than he could manage. It would have surprised them a good deal to learn that never until this particular evening had the Haighs known even the semblance of a serious disagreement. Lady Haigh had taken her young husband’s measure, and adapted herself to it with a cleverness which was really heroic in the case of a high-spirited, quick-tempered girl; and since her arrival in Khemistan had been wont to assure herself that “after the voyage, one could be angelic anywhere.”

Perhaps she saw reason to repent of this hasty assurance just now, as she sat facing her husband across a table littered with letters and papers which had formed part of the mail brought that morning by the steamer. Sir Dugald, a small fair man, with the colourless skin which becomes parchment-like instead of red under the influence of an Eastern sun, was still buttoned up in his uniform,—a fact of itself not calculated to improve his temper,—and punctuated his remarks by swinging one spurred heel rhythmically to and fro as he leaned back in his chair. His wife had rushed out to welcome him and pour her story into his ear in the same breath the moment that he dismounted after a long and dusty march; and he could not but be conscious that her muslin gown was tumbled and not of the freshest, her neck-ribbon awry, and her ringlets in disorder. Those ringlets were in themselves a cause for irritation. Elma Wargrave had worn her hair in severe bands of unassuming hideousness, but soon after her marriage Elma Haigh had horrified her husband by adopting ringlets, which were singularly unbecoming to her pleasant, homely face, under the delusion that he liked them. It cost Sir Dugald a good deal to refrain from proclaiming his abhorrence of the change which had been made for his sake; but he was a just man, and even at this moment of tension did his best not to allow his mind to be prejudiced by the obnoxious curls.

“Surely you must see,” he was saying with studied moderation, “that you have placed me in a most unpleasant position? What if Ferrers should call me out?”

“I should like to see him do it!” was the uncompromising reply. “I should just go and tell the General, and get him arrested.”

Sir Dugald sighed patiently. “But look at it for a moment from Ferrers’ point of view, Elma. He is engaged to this friend of yours, Miss Andromache—what’s her name? Penelope?—and waiting for her to come out. She comes out quite ready to marry him,—trousseau and wedding-cake and all,—and you meet her at the steamer and tell her such things about him that she breaks off the whole thing on the spot, without so much as giving him a chance to clear himself.”

“He drinks, he gambles, he is in the hands of the money-lenders,” said Lady Haigh tersely. “Was she to marry him in ignorance?”

“I don’t for a moment say it isn’t true. But if a man had done such a thing he would have been called a brute and a low cad. I suppose a woman can go and dash all a poor girl’s hopes, and separate her from her lover, and still be considered a friend to her?”

“But he wasn’t her lover, and it was her fears, not her hopes, that I put an end to.”

“My dear Elma!” Sir Dugald’s eyebrows went up.

“She didn’t love him,” persisted Lady Haigh. “Of course it sounds horrid as you put it, but when you know the circumstances you will say that I couldn’t possibly have let it go on. Penelope and Colin used to know Captain Ferrers when they were children. He lived near them, and their father was very kind to him, and used to get him out of scrapes about once a-week. Ferrers was fond of the children, and they adored him. When he went to India, Penelope can’t have been more than fourteen, but he asked her if she would marry him when he came home. I can’t imagine that he took it seriously, but she did; at any rate, she felt bound by it. A romantic child of that age, with a brother as romantic as herself to keep her up to it—of course she dreamed of him continually. But he scarcely ever wrote to her father, and never to her, and as she grew older she left off thinking about him. Then her father died, and she went to live with her uncle in London while Colin was at Addiscombe. That was when I used to meet her at the College. Why, she never even told me she was engaged! Of course, I didn’t know her very well, but well enough to have heard that. And since we came out her uncle died, and her aunt and cousins didn’t want her. She’s too handsome, you know. And Colin wanted her to come out with him—did I tell you they were twins, and absolutely devoted?—but the aunt said it wasn’t proper, until Colin remembered that old foolishness with Ferrers, and at once—oh, it was the most delightful and suitable and convenient plan that could possibly be devised! They had the grace not to thrust her on Ferrers unprepared, but Colin wrote to him to say he was bringing her out by the Overland, and poor Pen wrote to me—and both letters were lost when the Nuncomar went down! It was only with dreadful misgivings that Penelope had consented to the plan, and she got more and more miserable when they found no letters at Alexandria or Aden or Bombay. When they arrived here this morning, and still there were no letters and no Ferrers, she made Colin come to me, though he wanted to go and hunt up Ferrers, and I brought her up here at once, and settled matters.”

“And may I ask how you managed that?”

“I told her the sort of reputation Ferrers bears here, and how, after the way they were keeping it up next door last night, he could not have been down at the steamer even if he had got the letter, and then I sent to ask him to come and see me.”

“Slightly high-handed. But go on.”

“You needn’t pity him. I am sure in his heart he regards me as his dearest friend. I never saw a man so horrified in my life as when I told him that Miss Ross was here. He was positively relieved when I said that from what Miss Ross had learnt of his circumstances, she was sure he had no intention of claiming the promise she gave him in her childhood, and she hoped they would meet as friends, nothing more. He was really thankful, Dugald.”

Sir Dugald allowed himself the luxury of a smile. “Possibly. But surely the right thing would have been to help the poor wretch to pull himself together, and reform him generally, and let her marry him and keep him straight? That would have been a triumph.”

“Let him reform first, and then get her to marry him if he can,” snapped Lady Haigh. “Would you have let a sister of yours marry him?”

“Not if I could help it. But you will allow me to remark that a sister of mine would have had a home open to her here, instead of being thrown upon a brother as young as herself who knows nothing of the place and its ways, and who is coming up-country with us next month.”

“Oh, of course I offered her a home with us,” said Lady Haigh, with outward calmness, but inward trepidation.

Sir Dugald’s eyebrows were slowly raised again. “You offered her a home with us? Then of course there is no more to be said.”

He drew his chair nearer the table, and from the mass of papers selected a book-packet from the ends of which a familiar green wrapper protruded. Opening the parcel carefully with the paper-knife, he threw away the cover, and settled down with an anticipatory smile to enjoy his monthly instalment of Dickens. But he had gone too far. Anger Lady Haigh had expected, to his deliberate movements she was slowly growing accustomed, but that smile was intolerable. She leaned across the table, and snatched the serial from his hand.

“Dugald, I will not have you so rude! Of course I want to talk things over with you.”

“My dear Elma, what is there to talk over? In some miraculous way you have overcome the Chief’s objections to ladies on the frontier, and got leave to bring Miss Ross up with you. Anything that I could say would only spoil your excellent arrangements.”

“But I haven’t seen Major Keeling. How could I, when he only came back with you? And I haven’t got his leave. I want you to do that.”

“No,” said Sir Dugald resolutely. “I had enough to do with getting leave for you to come to Alibad, and I am not going to presume upon it. The Chief will think I want to cry off.”

“Then I’ll ask him myself,” recklessly. “I’m not in abject terror of your great Major Keeling. He’s only a good man spoilt for want of a wife.”

Lady Haigh meant to be irritating, and she succeeded, for her husband had told her over and over again that such a view was purely and hopelessly feminine. Sir Dugald threw down the paper-knife with a clatter, and drew back his chair as if to leave the room.

“If I can’t get him to do it,” she pursued meditatively, “I’ll—let me see——”

“Appeal to Cæsar—otherwise the General, I suppose? That seems to be your favourite plan.”

“Oh dear, no; certainly not. I shall make Penelope ask Major Keeling herself.”

“Now, Elma!” Sir Dugald detected something dangerous in the tone of his wife’s remark. “That’s no good. Just let the Chief alone. He isn’t the man to give in to anything of the kind.”

Lady Haigh seemed impressed, though perhaps she was only thinking deeply, and her husband, instead of resting on his prophetic laurels, unwisely descended to argument.

“He’s not a marrying man; and to go throwing your friend at his head is merely lowering her in his eyes. He would see it in a moment.”

“My dear Dugald!”—Lady Haigh awoke from a brown study—“what extraordinary things you are saying! I haven’t the slightest intention of throwing Penelope at any one’s head. It’s really vulgar to suspect every woman that comes near him of designs on Major Keeling.”

“Then why do you want to take Miss Ross up with us?”

“Because I am her only friend in India, of course. I wish you wouldn’t put such thoughts into my head, Dugald,” plaintively. “Now if anything should come to pass, I shall always feel that I have helped in bringing it on, and I do hate match-making.”

“But you said she was handsome,” objected the discomfited husband.

“Well, and is Major Keeling the only unmarried man in the world? Why, Captain Ferrers is coming up to Alibad too.”

“So he is. By the bye, didn’t you say he hadn’t seen her since she was a child? My word, Elma, he will have a crow to pluck with you when he finds what you have robbed him of.”

“I haven’t robbed him,” said Lady Haigh serenely. “I have only kept him from taking an unfair advantage of Penelope’s inexperience. He may win her yet. He shall have a fair field and no favour. He is coming here to-night.”

“Oh, that’s your idea of a fair field, is it? No favour, certainly.”

“Of course I want them to meet under my eye, until I see whether there is any hope of his reforming.”

“Well, we shall be a nice little family party on the frontier.”

“Shan’t we? Let me see, Major Keeling is going because he is the heaven-sent leader, and you because you fought your guns so well at Umarganj, and I because you got leave for me. Colin Ross is going because his father was an old friend of Major Keeling’s, Ferrers because the General begged Major Keeling to take him as the only chance of keeping him out of mischief, and Penelope is going because I am going to ask leave for her.”

“Don’t you hope you may get it? Well, if you have no more thunderbolts to launch, I’ll go and get into some cooler things.”

CHAPTER II.
THE AUTOCRAT.

There was a little informal gathering at the Haighs’ that evening. People often dropped in after dinner for some music, for Lady Haigh had actually brought her piano (without which no self-respecting bride then left her native land) up to Bab-us-Sahel with her. True, it had been necessary to float it ashore in its case; but it was unanimously agreed that its tone had not suffered in the very least. To-night there was the additional attraction that Lady Haigh had staying with her a handsome girl just out from home, who was understood, from the report of the other passengers on the steamer, to play the guitar and sing like an angel. Lady Haigh herself had no love for music whatever, and in these days public opinion would have forbidden her to touch an instrument; but she did her duty as hostess by rattling off one of the dashing, crashing compositions of the day, and then thankfully left her guest to bear the burden of the entertainment. The ring of eager listeners that surrounded Penelope Ross, demanding one song after another, made her feel that she was justified in so doing; and after she had seen the obnoxious Captain Ferrers enter, and satisfied herself that he perceived too late what a treasure he had lightly thrown away, she slipped out on the verandah to think over the task she had rashly set herself in her contest with her husband. How was Major Keeling, who hated women, and had merely been induced to condone Lady Haigh’s own existence because he had asked for Sir Dugald’s services without knowing he was married, to be persuaded to allow Penelope to accompany her to Alibad?

“I know he is dining at Government House to-night,” she reflected forlornly, “or I might have asked him to come in for some music. But then he would have been just as likely to send a chit to say that he disliked music. Men who hate women are such bears! And if I ask him to dinner another night, he will see through it as soon as he finds Penelope is here. And yet I must get things settled at once, or Penelope will think she is unwelcome, and Colin will persuade her to do something quixotic and detestable—marry Ferrers, or go out as a governess, or—— Why, surely——”

She ran to the edge of the verandah, and peered across the parched compound to the road. Above the feeble hedge of milk-bush she could see the head and shoulders of a horseman, of the very man with whom her thoughts were busy. The shock of black hair and short full beard made Major Keeling unmistakable at a time when beards were few, although there was no “regulation” military cut or arrangement of the hair. The fiercest-looking officer in Lady Haigh’s drawing-room at this moment, whose heavy moustache and truculent whiskers gave him the air of a swashbuckler, or at least of a member of Queen Cristina’s Foreign Legion, was a blameless Engineer of strong Evangelical principles. Lady Haigh saw at once the state of the case. The gathering at Government House had broken up at the early hour exacted by Lady Lennox, who was a vigilant guardian of her warrior’s health, and Major Keeling was whiling away the time by a moonlight ride before returning to his quarters. To summon one of the servants, and send him flying to stop the Major Sahib and ask him to come and speak to Lady Haigh, was the work of a moment; for though Major Keeling might be a woman-hater, he had never yet rebelled against the sway which his subordinate’s wife established as by right over all the men around her, for their good. Lady Haigh disliked the idea of putting her influence to the test in this way, for if Major Keeling refused to yield there could be nothing but war between them in future; but the matter was urgent.

“You wanted to speak to me, Lady Haigh?” Major Keeling had dismounted, and was coming up the steps, looking almost gigantic in the picturesque full-dress uniform of the Khemistan Horse.

“I want you to do a kindness,” she responded, rather breathlessly.

“I know what that means. I am to break a rule, or relax an order, or in some other way go against my better judgment.”

“I—I want you to let me bring a friend of mine to Alibad with me.”

Major Keeling’s brow darkened. “I knew this would come. You assured me you could stand the isolation, but I knew better. Of course you want female society; it is quite natural you should. But you professed to understand that on the frontier you couldn’t have it.”

“Not society—just this one girl,” pleaded Lady Haigh.

“Who is she? a sister of yours or Haigh’s?”

“No relation to either of us. She is Mr Ross’s sister—your old friend’s daughter—an orphan, and all alone.”

“Engaged to any one who is going with me?”

“No—o.” The negative, doubtful at first, became definite. “I won’t say a word about Ferrers, even to get him to let her come,” was Lady Haigh’s resolute determination.

“Then she can’t come.”

“Oh, Major Keeling! And if I had said she was engaged, you would have said that the man would be always wasting his time dangling round her.”

“But as she isn’t, the whole force would waste their time dangling round her,” was the crushing reply. “No, Lady Haigh, we have no use for young ladies on the frontier. It will be work, not play.”

“Play! Do you think a girl with that face wants to spend her life in playing?” demanded Lady Haigh, very much in the tone with which she had once been wont to crush her family. “Look there!”

She drew him to the open window of the drawing-room and made him look through the reed curtain. The light fell full on Penelope’s face as she sang, and Lady Haigh felt that the beholder was impressed.

“What’s that she’s singing?” he growled. “‘County Guy’? Scott? There’s some good in her, at any rate.”

Lady Haigh forbore to resent the slighting imputation, and Major Keeling remained watching the singer through the curtain. Penelope’s contemporaries considered her tall and queenly, though she would now be thought decidedly under middle height. Her dark hair was dressed in a graceful old fashion which had almost gone out before the combined assault of bands and ringlets,—raised high on the head, divided in front, and slightly waved on the temples,—a style which by rights demanded an oval face and classical features as its complement. Judged by this standard, Penelope might have been found wanting, for her features were at once stronger and less regular than the classical ideal; but the grey eyes beneath the broad low brow disarmed criticism, they were so large and deep and calm, save when they were lighted, as now, by the fire of the ballad she was singing. Those were days when a white dress and coloured ribbons were considered the only evening wear for a young girl; and Penelope wore a vivid scarlet sash, with knots of scarlet catching up her airy white draperies, and a scarlet flower in her hair. As Major Keeling stood looking at her, Lady Haigh caught a murmur which at once astonished and delighted her.

“That is a woman who would help a man—not drag him back.” Then, apparently realising that he had spoken aloud, he added hastily, “Yes, yes, as you say. But who’s the man with the unlucky face?”

His finger indicated a tall thin youth who stood behind the singer. The face was a remarkable one, thin and hawklike, with a high forehead and closely compressed lips. The hair and small moustache were fair and reddish in tint, the eyes grey, with a curious look of aloofness instead of the keenness that would have seemed to accord with the rest of the features.

“That? Why, that’s Colin Ross, Penelope’s brother. What is there unlucky about him?”

“Oh, nothing—merely a look. Her brother, do you say?”

“Yes, her twin brother. But what look do you mean? Oh, you must tell me, Major Keeling, or I shall tell Penelope that you say her brother has an unlucky face.”

“You will do nothing of the kind. Hush! don’t attract their attention. I can’t explain it: I have seen it in several men—not many, fortunately—and it has always meant an early and violent death.”

“But this is pure superstition!” cried Lady Haigh. “And, after all, he is a soldier.”

“Call it superstition if you like: I only speak of what I know, and I would not have spoken if you had not compelled me. And there are worse deaths than a soldier’s. One of the men I speak of was poisoned, one was murdered in Ethiopia, one was lost in the Nuncomar. That’s how it goes. What sort of man is young Ross?”

“Very serious, I believe,” answered Lady Haigh. The word still had its cant meaning, which would now be expressed by “religious.”

“So much the better for him. I can trust you to say nothing to his sister about this?”

“Now, is it likely? But the least you can do now is to let her come with us. His twin sister! you couldn’t have the heart to separate them when he may have such dreadful things before him?”

“How would it be better if she were there?” he asked gloomily; but, as if by a sudden impulse, parted the curtain and advanced into the room. Penelope, her song ended, was toying with the knot of scarlet ribbons attached to the guitar, while her hearers were trying to decide upon the next song, when the group was divided by the abrupt entrance of a huge man, as it seemed to her, in extraordinary clothes. It struck her as remarkable that every man in the room seemed to stiffen into attention at the moment, and she rose hesitatingly, wondering whether this could possibly be Sir Henry Lennox.

“Do me the honour to present me, Lady Haigh,” said the stranger, in a deep voice which seemed to be subdued for the occasion.

“Major Keeling, Miss Ross,” said Lady Haigh promptly. She was enjoying herself.

“I hear you wish to come up to Alibad with us,” said Major Keeling abruptly. “Can you ride?”

“Yes, I am very fond of it.”

“I don’t mean trotting along an English road. Can you ride on through the sand hour after hour, so as to keep up with the column, and not complain? Complaints would mean that you would go no farther.”

“I can promise I won’t complain. If I feel I can’t stick on my horse any longer, I will get some one to tie me into the saddle.” Penelope smiled slightly. This catechism was not without its humorous side.

“Can you cut down your baggage to regulation limits? Let me see, what did I promise you, Lady Haigh? A camel? Well, half that. Can you do with a camel between you?”

“I think so.” Penelope was conscious of Lady Haigh’s face of agony.

“You must, if you come. Can you do what you are told?”

“I—I believe so. I generally do.”

“If you get orders to leave Alibad in an hour, can you forsake everything, and be ready for the march? That’s what I mean. If I find it necessary to send you down, go you must. Can you make yourself useful? Oh, I daresay you can do pretty things like most young ladies, but can you put yourself at the surgeon’s disposal after a fight, and be some good?”

“I would try,” said Penelope humbly. It was before Miss Nightingale’s days, and the suggestion sounded very strange to her. Major Keeling stood looking at her, until his black brows relaxed suddenly.

“All right, you can come,” he said. “And,” he added, as he left the room, “I’ll allow you a camel apiece after all.”

“What an interesting-looking man Major Keeling is!” said Penelope to her friend the next morning.

“Some people think so. I don’t particularly admire that kind of swarthy picturesqueness myself,” was the meditative answer. “I won’t praise him to her on any account,” said Lady Haigh to herself.

“It’s not that so much as his look and his voice. Don’t you know——”

“Why, you are as bad as the girls at Bombay. One of them told me they all perfectly doated on dear Major Keeling; he was just like a dear delightful bandit in an opera.”

“Really, Elma!” Penelope’s graceful head was lifted with dignity, and Lady Haigh, foreseeing a coolness, hastened to make amends.

“I was only in fun. We don’t doat, do we, Pen? or gush, or anything of that sort. But it was only the happiest chance his letting you come with us. If he had caught you singing Tennyson, or your dear Miss Barrett—Mrs Browning, is it? what does it signify?—there would have been no hope for you. But it happened to be Scott, and that conquered him at once. They say he knows all the poems by heart, and recites them before a battle. Dugald heard him doing it at Umarganj, at any rate. The troopers like it, because they think he is muttering spells to discomfit the enemy. Isn’t it romantic?”

“How funny!” was Penelope’s disappointing comment.

“He was very fond of Byron once, but he has given him up for conscience’ sake,” pursued Lady Haigh.

“For conscience’ sake?”

“Yes; Byron was a man of immoral life, and his works are not fit for a Christian’s reading.”

“He must be a very good man, I suppose. I shouldn’t have guessed——”

“That he was good? No; he might be mysteriously wicked, from his looks, mightn’t he? But I believe he is really good, and he has the most extraordinary influence over the natives. Dugald was telling me last night that at Alibad they seemed inclined to receive him as a saint—as if his reputation had gone before him, you know. He never drinks anything but water, for one thing; and he doesn’t dance, and he never speaks to a lady if he can help it—— Oh, Pen, were you very much astonished by the catechism he put you through last night?”

“Yes,” admitted Penelope. “He asked me such strange things, and in such a solemn voice. I should have liked time to think before answering.”

“Well, it was nothing to what he asked me. I had to promise never to keep Dugald back—or even to try to—from anything he was ordered to do. Wasn’t it barbarous? You see, in that fight at Umarganj Dugald had got his guns up just in time to take part, and they decided the battle. Major Keeling was so pleased that he said at once, ‘We must have you at Alibad,’ and of course Dugald was delighted. But when the Chief found out he was married he almost refused to take him, for he had sworn he would have no ladies on the frontier. And there was I, who had said over and over again that I would never stand between Dugald and his chances! It really looked like a romantic suicide, leaving pathetic letters to break the cruel Major’s heart, didn’t it? But Sir Henry Lennox interceded for me, and I told Major Keeling I would promise anything if he would only let us both go. And now I wake up at night dreaming that the Chief has ordered Dugald to certain death, and I mustn’t say a word, and I lie there sobbing, or shaking with terror, until Dugald hears me, and asks me why I don’t control my imagination. That’s what husbands are. What with keeping them in a good temper when they are there, and missing them when they are away, one has no peace. Don’t invest in one, Pen.”

“I have no intention of doing it—at any rate at present. But, Elma——”

“Of course I mean it all depends on your getting the right man.” Lady Haigh was uncomfortably conscious that she might one day wish to explain away her last remark. “Only find him, and he shall have you with my blessing. Pen, did you notice anything about Major Keeling’s eyes? I mean”—she went on, talking quickly to cover her sudden realisation that the transition must have appeared somewhat abrupt to Penelope—“did he seem to be able to read your mind? The natives believe that he can, and say that he can tell when a man is a spy simply by looking at him. He seems to have funny ideas, too, about being able to foretell a person’s fate from his face. He was very much struck by—at least”—she blundered on, conscious that she was getting deeper and deeper into the mire—“he said something last night about Colin’s having a very remarkable face.”

“Oh dear, I hope he hasn’t second-sight! Colin has it sometimes, and if two of them get together they’ll encourage one another in it,” said Penelope wearily. “Colin is not quite sure about its being right, so he never tries to use it, but sometimes—— Oh, Elma, I must tell you, and I’m afraid you won’t like it at all. Colin was here before breakfast, and talked to me a long time about George Ferrers. I think they had been having a ride together.”

“Colin ought to know better than to have anything to do with Ferrers. He will get no good from him.”

“Why, Elma, he has always been so devoted to him, and George used to seem quite different when he was with us. Colin is terribly grieved about what you—I—did yesterday. He says it was very wrong to break off the engagement altogether, that I was quite right not to marry George at once, but that I ought to have put him on probation, giving him every possible hope for the future.”

“I think I see you putting Captain Ferrers on probation,” said Lady Haigh grimly, recalling her brief interview with the gentleman in question. “He would be the last person to stand it, however much he might wish to marry you——” She broke off suddenly.

“But, Elma, he does,” said Penelope piteously, understanding the “But he doesn’t” which her friend suppressed for the sake of her feelings. “That’s the worst of it. He told Colin that he was so taken aback, and felt himself so utterly unworthy, when you told him I was here, that he felt the best thing for my happiness was to break off the engagement at once. But when he came in in the evening, and saw us both again, and heard the old songs, he felt he had thrown away his only chance of doing better. Colin always seems to bring out the best in him, you know, and——”

“Do you know what happened as soon as he had said good night to you?” asked Lady Haigh coldly. “He was beating one of his servants, who had made a mistake about bringing his horse, so frightfully that Dugald had to go and interfere. He said to me when he came back that it was a comfort to think Ferrers would get a knife into him if he tried that sort of thing on the frontier.”

“But doesn’t that show what a terrible temper poor George has, and how hard it must be for him to control it?” cried Penelope. “He says he feels he should just go straight to the dogs if we took away all hope from him. I know it’s very wrong of him to say it, but I dare not take the responsibility, Elma. And Colin says he has always had such a very strong feeling that in some way or other George’s eternal welfare was bound up with him or me, or both of us, and so——”

“Now I call that profane,” was the crushing reply. “Oh, I know Colin would cheerfully sacrifice you or himself, or both of you, as you say, for the sake of saving any one, and much more George Ferrers, but it doesn’t lie with him. What if he sacrifices you and doesn’t save Ferrers? But I know it’s no good talking. Colin will take his own course in his own meek unbending way, and drag you after him. But I won’t countenance it, at any rate. What has he got you to do?”

“I know it’s my fault,” sobbed Penelope, “and I must seem dreadfully ungrateful after all your kindness. I had been so miserable about George’s silence, that when you told me about him yesterday I felt I had known it all along, and that it was really a relief the blow had fallen. And when you said he quite agreed that it was best to break off the engagement, a weight seemed to be taken off my mind. Of course I ought to have seen him myself—not shuffled off my responsibilities on you, and found out what he really felt, so as to keep him from sacrificing himself for me, and——”

“Stuff and nonsense!” ejaculated Lady Haigh, very loudly and firmly. “Penelope, will you kindly leave off reproaching yourself and me, and tell me what the state of affairs is at present between you and George Ferrers? You don’t care a rap for him; but because he says he can’t take care of himself without a woman to help him, you are afraid to tell him that he is a coward to try to thrust his burden off on you. Are you engaged?”

“No,” explained Penelope; “Colin did not wish that. It is only—only if he keeps straight, as he calls it, at Alibad, we are to be engaged again.”

“And suppose you fall in love with some one else?”

“Elma! how could I? We are practically engaged, of course.”

“Not at all,” said Lady Haigh briskly. “You are under my charge, and I refuse to recognise anything of the kind. Until you’re engaged again Ferrers is no more to you than any of the other men, and I won’t have him hanging about. Why”—reading a protest in Penelope’s face—“what good would it be putting him on probation if he had all the privileges of a fiancé? And nothing is to be said about it, Penelope. I simply will not have it.”

“I only want to do what is right,” said Penelope, subdued by her friend’s authoritative tone. “As you say, it will be a truer test for him if he does not come here often.”

“Trust me to see to that. And Master Colin shall have a good piece of my mind,” said Lady Haigh resolutely.

CHAPTER III.
A BLANK SHEET.

A description in detail of the journey from Bab-us-Sahel to the frontier would be as wearisome to the reader as the journey itself was to the travellers. Lady Haigh and Penelope learned to remain resolutely in the saddle for hours after they had determined that human nature could do no more than slip off helplessly on the sand, and they discovered also how remarkably little in the way of luxuries one camel could carry when it was already loaded with bedding and camp-furniture. They found that there was not much to choose, so far as comfort was concerned, between the acknowledged desert, diversified by sand-storms and mirages, and the so-called forests, where trees above and bushes below were alike as dry as tinder, and a spark carelessly dropped might have meant death to the whole party. An interlude in the shape of a river-voyage might have seemed to promise better things, but the small flat-bottomed steamers were cramped and hot, incredibly destitute of conveniences, and perversely given to running aground in spots where they had to remain until a levy had been made on the neighbouring population to drag them off. Scenery there was none, save banks of mud, for the river ran high above the level of the country through which it flowed; and it was with positive relief that the travellers disembarked at a little mud settlement embowered in date-palms, and prepared for a further ride. A fresh trial was awaiting Lady Haigh here in the shape of a peremptory order to Sir Dugald to push on at once to Alibad by forced marches, leaving the ladies to follow quietly under the care of the regimental surgeon. Major Keeling, with a portion of his regiment and the little band of picked men he had gathered together to help him administer his district, had preceded the Haighs’ party, travelling as fast as possible; and now it seemed as if his restless energy had involved him already in hostilities with the wild tribes. Lady Haigh turned very white as she bade her husband farewell; but she made no attempt to hold him back, and he rode away into the sand-clouds with his two or three horsemen. She would have liked to follow him as fast as possible; but Dr Tarleton, a dark taciturn man, remarkable for nothing but an absolute devotion to Major Keeling, had his orders, and meant to obey them. He had been told to conduct the ladies quietly to Alibad, and quietly they should go, taking proper rest, and not pushing on faster than his medical judgment allowed. The desert was even drier, hotter, and less inhabited than that between Bab-us-Sahel and the river, and to the travellers it seemed unending. Of course they suffered torments from prickly heat, and became unrecognisable through the attacks of mosquitoes; and Lady Haigh’s ringlets worried her so much that nothing but the thought of her husband’s disappointment restrained her from cutting them off altogether. As the distance from Alibad became less, however, her spirits seemed to revive, though this was not due to any special charm in the locality. Even Penelope was astonished at the interest and vivacity with which her friend contemplated and remarked upon a stretch of desert which looked like nothing so much as a sea of shifting mud, with a small group of mud-built huts clustering round a mud-built fort, like shoals about a sandbank, and a range of mud-coloured hills rising above it on the left. No trees, no water, no European buildings: decidedly Alibad, sweltering in the glaring sun, did not look a promising abode. Sir Dugald must be very delightful indeed if his presence could render such a place even tolerable. And why had he not come to meet his wife?

“Look there!” cried Lady Haigh suddenly. “What’s that?”

She pointed with her whip to the desert on the right of the town. A cloud of dust, followed by another somewhat smaller, seemed to be leaving the neighbourhood of the fort and the huts at a tremendous pace, crossing the route of the travellers at right angles.

“I think it must be one man chasing another,” suggested Penelope, whose eyes had by this time become accustomed to the huge dust-clouds raised by even a single horseman.

“Not quite, Miss Ross,” said Dr Tarleton, with a grim chuckle. “That’s the Chief taking his constitutional, with his orderly trying to keep up with him. There!”—as a patch of harder ground made a break in the cloud of dust—“you can see him now. Look there, though! something is wrong. He’s riding without any cap or helmet, and that means things are very contrary indeed. It would kill any other man, but he can stand it in these moods, though I got him to promise not to run such risks. Look out!”

He checked his horse sharply, for the two riders came thundering across the path, evidently without seeing those who were so near them—Major Keeling with his hair blowing out on the wind and his face distorted with anger, the orderly urging his pony to its utmost speed to keep up with the Commandant’s great black horse.

“Don’t be frightened. He’ll work it off in that way,” said the doctor soothingly to his two charges. “When you see him next, he’ll be as mild as milk, but it’s as well not to come in his way just now. Look, Lady Haigh! isn’t that your husband coming?”

It was indeed Sir Dugald who rode up, spick and span in a cool white suit, but with a worried look about his eyes which did not fade for some time. “You look rather subdued,” he remarked, when the first greetings had been exchanged. “I am afraid Alibad isn’t all you expected it?”

“Why, it’s perfectly charming!” cried Lady Haigh hurriedly. “So—so unique!”

Sir Dugald turned to Penelope. “I shall get the truth from you, Miss Ross. Has Elma been horribly depressed?”

“Not at all. In fact, I wondered what made her so cheerful.”

“Ah, I thought so. Sort of place that there’s some credit in being jolly in—eh, Mrs Mark Tapley? Whenever I find Elma in uproariously good spirits, I know she is utterly miserable, and trying to spare my feelings. Wish I had the gift of cheerfulness. The Chief has been biting our heads off all round this morning.”

“Yes, we saw him. What is the matter with him?” cried Lady Haigh and Penelope together.

“Well, it’s a good thing you ladies didn’t run across him just now. You’ve defeated one of his most cherished schemes. He meant to blow up the fort and use the materials for housebuilding, but he was kind enough to remember that either tents or mud huts would be fairly uncomfortable for you, so he spared the old place until we could get a roof over our heads. But meanwhile the Government heard of his intention, and forbade him to destroy such an interesting relic, so the new canal has to make a big bend, and all his plans are thrown out. And as if that wasn’t enough, in comes a cossid [messenger] this morning with letters from Sir Henry, hinting that his differences with the Government are so acute that he feels he’ll be forced to resign, and then we are safe to have a wretched civilian over us. Of course the Chief feels it, and we’ve felt it too.”

“Poor Major Keeling! I feel quite guilty,” said Lady Haigh.

“Oh, you needn’t. You’ll have a crow to pluck with him when I tell you why he sent me that order to hurry on from the river. It was simply and solely to test you—to see if you would keep your promise. If you had protested and raised a storm, Tarleton had orders to pack you both down-stream again immediately.”

“Really! To lay traps for one in that way!” Indignation choked Lady Haigh’s utterance, and she rode on in wrathful silence while her husband pointed out to Penelope the line of the projected roads and canals, now only indicated by rows of stakes, the young trees just planted in sheltered spots, and carefully fenced in against goats and firewood-seekers, and the rising walls or mere foundations of various large buildings. Crossing an open space, dotted with the dark tents and squabbling children of a wandering tribe of gipsy origin, they rode in at the gateway of the fort, where the great doors hung idly against the wall, unguarded even by a sentry. Sir Dugald helped the ladies to dismount, and led them into the first of a range of lofty, thick-walled rooms, freshly white-washed.

“You’ll be in clover here,” he said. “The heat in the tents is like nothing on earth. The Chief is a perfect salamander; but your brother, Miss Ross, has been living under his table with a wet quilt over it, and I have scooped out a burrow for myself in the ground under my tent. Porter” (the Engineer officer already mentioned) “makes his boy pour water over him every night when he goes to bed, so as to get an hour or so of coolness. By the bye, Elma, the Chief and Ross and Tarleton are coming to dine with us to-night.”

“Dugald!” cried Lady Haigh, in justifiable indignation. “That man will be the death of me! To dine, when there is no time to get any food, and the servants haven’t come up, and there isn’t any furniture!”

“Well, perhaps I ought to say that we are to dine with him up here. He provides the food, and we are to have it in the durbar-room over there. It’s a sort of festivity to celebrate your coming up. He really means it well, you know.”

Lady Haigh was perceptibly mollified, but she took time to thaw.

“It is a pretty idea of Major Keeling’s,” she said, in a less chilly tone. “At least, if—— Dugald, tell me: he hasn’t asked Ferrers?”

“Why should he? And he couldn’t, in any case. Ferrers is in charge of our outpost at Shah Nawaz, miles away.”

“And Major Keeling knows nothing—about Penelope?”

“How could he? I haven’t told him, and I shouldn’t imagine Ferrers has. Besides, I thought there was nothing to tell? But there are complications ahead. If the General goes home we are bound to have Ferrers’ uncle, old Crayne, sent to Bab-us-Sahel, and then I don’t think his aspiring nephew will stay long up here.”

“Well, Penelope shan’t go down with him. Did you call me, Pen?” and Lady Haigh rose from the box on which she and her husband had seated themselves to enjoy a brief tête-à-tête, and hurried after Penelope, who was exploring the new domain.

However troubled Major Keeling’s mind may have been when he started on his ride, he seemed to have left all care behind him when he appeared in Lady Haigh’s dining-room—as he insisted on calling it, although he himself was responsible for both the dinner and the furniture. He laid himself out to be amiable with such success that Sir Dugald averred afterwards he had sat trembling through the whole meal, feeling certain that the Chief could not keep it up, and dreading some fearful explosion. The ladies and Colin Ross, who were less accustomed to meet the guest officially, saw nothing remarkable in his courteous cheerfulness; and though Penelope’s heart warmed towards the man who could so completely lay aside his own worries for the sake of his friends, Lady Haigh, whose mind had recurred to her wrongs, could barely bring herself to be civil to him. He turned upon her at last.

“Lady Haigh, I am in disgrace; I know it. I have felt a chill of disapproval radiating from you the whole time I have been sitting beside you. What have I done? Ah, I know! Haigh has let the cat out of the bag. How dare you betray official secrets, sir? Well, Lady Haigh, am I never to be forgiven?”

“I could forgive your sending for my husband,” said Lady Haigh, with dignity, “especially as there was no danger; but to doubt my word, after I had promised——”

“I had no doubt whatever of your intention of keeping your word. What I was not quite sure about was your power. I expect heroism from you two ladies as a matter of course. Every British commander has a right to expect it from Englishwomen, hasn’t he? But I want something more,—I want common-sense. I want you, when your husband, Lady Haigh, and your brother, Miss Ross, and the rest of us, are all away on an expedition, and perhaps there’s not a man in the station but Tarleton, to go on just as usual—to sew and read, and go out for your rides as if you hadn’t the faintest anxiety to trouble you. While we are away doing the work, you’ll have to represent us here, and impress the natives.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that you only wanted people without any natural feelings?” demanded Lady Haigh.

“I did, didn’t I? You seemed to think so when I gave you leave to come up. At any rate, if you bring natural feelings up here, you must be able to control them. Whatever the trouble is, you must keep up before the natives, or our friends will be discouraged, and our enemies emboldened. Did you think I could allow the greatest chance that has ever come to this district to be jeopardised for the sake of natural feelings?” He emphasised the words with an almost savage sneer. “Think what our position is here. Alibad is an outpost of British India, not merely of Khemistan; we are the advanced-guard of civilisation—not a European beyond until you come to the Scythian frontier. We hold one of the keys of India; any enemy attacking from this side must pass over our bodies. And how do we expect to maintain the position? Not by virtue of stone walls. When I came up here first I found a wretched garrison shut in—locked in—in this very fort, with the tribes plundering up to the gates. I turned them out, and gave orders that the gates were never to be fastened again. Out on the open plain we are and we shall be, if we have to sleep in our boots to the end of our lives. Peace and security for the ryot, endless harrying for the raider until he gives up his evil ways. There shall not be a spot on this border where the ruffians shall be able to pause for a sip of water without looking to see if the Khemistan Horse are behind them, and before long their own people will give them up when they go back to their tribes. Teach the whole country that we have come to stay, that it pays better to be on our side than against us—there is the beginning.”

“And then?” asked Penelope breathlessly.

“And then—you know the old saying in Eastern Europe, ‘The grass never grows where the Turk’s hoof has trod’? Here it shall be, ‘Where the Englishman’s hoof has trod, the grass grows doubly green.’ Down by the river they called all this part Yagistan, you know—the country of the wild men,” he explained for Penelope’s benefit, “but now the name has retreated over the frontier. That’s not enough, though. We have the district before us like a blank sheet—a sea of sand, without cultivation or trade, and precious little of either to hope for from the inhabitants. What is our business? To cover that blank sheet. Canals, then cultivation; roads, then travel; fairs, then trade. The thing will be an object-lesson all the way into Central Asia. Only give me the time, and it shall be done. I have the men and the free hand, and——” He broke off suddenly, and laughed with some embarrassment. “No wonder you are all looking at me as if you thought me mad,” he said; “I seem to have been forcing my personal aspirations on you in the most unwarranted way. But as I have burdened you with such a rodomontade, I can’t well do less than ask whether any one has any suggestions that would help in making it a reality.”

“I have,” said Lady Haigh promptly. “If you want the natives to think we mean to stay here, Major Keeling, we ought to have a club, and public gardens.”

“So we ought, and it struck me only to-day that this old fort might serve as a club-house when your house is built, Lady Haigh, and you turn out of it. I won’t have it used for anything remotely connected with defence or administration, but to turn it over to the station as a place of amusement ought to produce an excellent effect. But as to the gardens——”

“Why, that space in front!” cried Lady Haigh. “Turn those gipsies off, and you have the very place, with the club on this side, and the church and your new house and all the government buildings opposite.”

“Excellent!” said Major Keeling. “The gipsies have already had notice to quit, and a new camping-ground appointed them, but I meant to use the space for godowns until my plans were thrown out. Really I begin to think I made a mistake in not welcoming ladies up here. Their advice seems likely to be distinctly useful.”

“What an admission!” said Lady Haigh, with exaggerated gratitude. “But don’t be deceived by Major Keeling’s flattery, Pen. Very soon you’ll find that he has set a trap to see whether you have any natural feelings.”

“How could I subject another lady to such a test when you have objected so strongly, pray? Miss Ross need fear nothing at my hands.”

“Well, I call that most unfair. Come, Pen. Why!”—Lady Haigh broke off with a little laugh—“we have no drawing-room in which to give you gentlemen tea.”

“Have you visited the ramparts yet?” asked Major Keeling. “You will find them a pleasant place in the evenings, and even in the daytime there will sometimes be shade and a breeze there. I had one of the tower staircases cleaned and made safe for your benefit, and if you will honour me by considering the ramparts as your drawing-room this evening, the servants shall bring the tea there.”

The suggestion was gladly accepted, and a move was made at once. The rampart, when reached, proved to afford a pleasant promenade, and the diners separated naturally into couples. Lady Haigh had much to say to her husband, while the doctor and Colin Ross gravitated together, rather by the wish of the older man than the younger, it appeared, and Penelope found herself in Major Keeling’s charge. They stood beside the parapet after a time, and he pointed out to her the watchfires of the camp below, the stretch of desert beyond, white in the moonlight, and beyond that again the distant hills, the portals of unexplored Central Asia.

“Do you hear anything?” he asked her suddenly.

She strained her ears, but beyond the faint sounds of the camp, the stamping of an impatient horse, the clink of a bridle, or the clank of a sentry’s weapon, she could hear nothing.

“I knew it,” he said. “It is only fancy, but I wondered whether this night-stillness would affect you as it does me. You know what it is to stand alone at night and look into the darkness, and listen to the silence? Whenever I do that on this frontier I hear footsteps—hurrying steps, the steps of a multitude, passing on and on for ever. I pray God I may never hear them turn aside and come this way!”

“Why?” asked Penelope, awed by his tone.

“Because they are the footsteps of the wild tribes of Central Asia, whose fathers poured down through these passes to the conquest of India. They wander from place to place, owning no master, obeying their chiefs when it suits them, always ready for plunder and rapine. And to the south, spread out before them, is the wealth of the idolater and the Kaffir. Of course, it would take something to move them—a cattle-plague, perhaps, leading to famine—and a leader to unite them sufficiently to utilise their vast numbers to advantage; but who is to know what is going on beyond those hills? There are men who have gone there and returned—that splendid young fellow Whybrow is there now—but they see only what they are allowed to see. I tell you, sometimes at night the thought of those wandering millions comes upon me with such force that I cannot rest. I get up and ride—ride along the border, even across it into Nalapur, to make sure that the tribes are not at our very doors.”

“You ride alone at night? But that must be very dangerous!”

“Dangerous? If I was afraid of danger, I should not be here.”

“But your life is so valuable. Has no one begged you to be prudent?”

“My officers used to preach to me, but I have broken them of it—all but the doctor. Poor Tarleton! he is a very faithful fellow. But will you think me quite mad, Miss Ross, if I tell you that there is another sound as well? It is as if the warder of a fortress should listen across a valley, and hear the tread of the sentry on the ramparts of a hostile fortress opposite. And the tread comes nearer.”

“Major Keeling, you frighten me. Who—what do you mean?”

He laughed. “Oh, the tread is a good thousand miles away yet. But it is coming nearer, all the same. Nominally it is stopped by the Araxes, but it is already pressing on to the Jaxartes. The Khanates will be absorbed, and then—will the two warders meet face to face then, I wonder? It may not be in my day, or even yours, but it will come.”

“You mean Scythia? But is she advancing? Why——?”

“Is it for me to say? She explains it as the trend of her manifest destiny; we say it is her hunger for territory. But she advances, and we remain stationary, or worse, advance and retreat again. But retreat from this point we will not while the breath of life is in me,” he cried passionately; “and when I die, I mean to be buried here, if there is any burial for me at all, that at least the bones of an Englishman may hold the frontier for England.”

“But,” hesitated Penelope, “if we don’t want to advance, why shouldn’t she?—up to our frontier, I mean, not beyond.”

“Because she wouldn’t stop there. How could she, after sweeping over all the barren worthless regions, pause when a rich fertile country lay before her? I couldn’t myself. Otherwise, one would say that at any rate her rule could not be worse than the present state of things. There are plague-spots in Central Asia, like Gamara, which ought to be swept from the face of the earth. But we ought to do it, not they. It’s our men who have been done to death there—not spies, but regularly accredited representatives of the Government—and we don’t stir a finger to avenge them. Whybrow takes his life in his hand when he enters Central Asia, and so will any man who follows him.”

“But why don’t we do anything?” asked Penelope, wondering at his impassioned tone, and little dreaming of the sinister influence which the wicked city of Gamara was to exercise over her own life.

“Because we are too lazy, too meek, too much afraid of responsibility—anything! Old Harry—I beg your pardon—Sir Henry Lennox would do it. I heard him say so once to the troops at a review—that he would like nothing better than to conquer Central Asia at their head, plundering all the way to Gamara. He got pulled up for it, of course. He isn’t exempt from official recognition of that kind any more than meaner people, though I really think I am particularly unfortunate. Just now I am in trouble with Church as well as State. I was so ill-advised as to write to a bishop about sending missionaries here.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” said Penelope. “Colin—my brother—is so disappointed that you haven’t asked for any.”

“Ah, but wait. I want to pick the men. To let the wrong man loose up here would be to destroy all my hopes for the frontier. There’s a fellow at the Cape named Livingstone—the man who made a long waggon-journey a year or two ago to look for some great lake the natives talked of, but found nothing, and means to try again—if I could get him I should be happy. He’s a doctor—physics the people as well as preaches to them, you see, and that’s the kind of Christianity that appeals to untutored savages like his flock and mine. Well, I asked the bishop if he could send us up a man like that, and his chaplain answered that I was evidently not aware that the Church’s care was for men’s souls, not their bodies. I wrote back that the Church must be very different from her Master if that was the case; and the answer came that in consequence of the unbecoming tone of my last communication, his lordship must decline any further correspondence with me. But that’s nothing. When I have fought for months to bring some exploit of the regiment’s to the notice of the authorities, and got an official commendation at last, I have had to insert in regimental orders a scathing rebuke of the insubordinate and unsuitable letters from me which had extorted it. But why am I telling you all this? It must have bored you horribly.”

“Oh no!” cried Penelope. “I have been so much interested. And even if not, I am so glad to listen, if it is any help to you——”

“Help?” he asked sharply. “Why on earth should it be a help?”

“I don’t know,” answered Penelope, with some surprise. “I only thought—perhaps you don’t care to talk things over with your officers—it might be a relief to say what you think sometimes——”

“I believe that’s it,” he answered; “and therefore I pour out the bottled-up nonsense of years on your devoted head, without any thought of your feelings. You should have checked me, Miss Ross. I ought to have been asking you if you adored dancing, or what the latest fashion in albums was, instead of keeping you standing while I discoursed on things as they are and should not be. Another time you must pull me up short.”

CHAPTER IV.
UNSTABLE.

Captain Ferrers was jogging gloomily across the desert from Fort Shah Nawaz to Alibad, and his face was only the index to his thoughts. At the moment he did not know whether he hated more the outpost of which he was in command or the errand that was taking him to Alibad, and as he rode he cursed his luck. There was no denying that everything seemed to go wrong with him. Harassed by debts and awkward acquaintances at Bab-us-Sahel, he had acquiesced with something like relief in Sir Henry Lennox’s suggestion, which was practically a command, that he should sever himself altogether from his old associates by taking service on the frontier. But, knowing as he did that he was sent there partly as a punishment and partly in hope of saving him for better things, he felt it quite unnecessary to conciliate his gaoler, as he persisted in considering Major Keeling. The two men were conscious of that strong mutual antipathy which sometimes exists without any obvious or even imagined reason, and Major Keeling was not sorry when Ferrers showed an inclination to claim the command at Shah Nawaz as his right. It was not an ideal post for a man who needed chiefly to be saved from himself; but Ferrers was senior to all the other men save Porter the Engineer, who could not be spared from the head station. Therefore Ferrers had his desire, and loathed it continuously from the day he obtained it. The place was no fort in reality, merely a cluster of mud-brick buildings, standing round a courtyard in which the live stock of the garrison was gathered for safety at night, and possessing a gateway which could be blocked up with thorn-bushes. On every side of it spread the desert, with some signs of cultivation towards the south, and in the north the dark hills which guarded the Akrab Pass, the door into Central Asia. To Ferrers and his detachment fell the carrying out in this neighbourhood of the policy outlined by Major Keeling in his conversation at the dinner-table—the protection of the peaceable inhabitants of the district, and the incessant harrying of all disturbers of the peace, whether from the British or the Nalapuri side of the frontier. At first the life was fairly exciting, though Ferrers’ one big fight was spoilt by the necessity of sending to Alibad for reinforcements; but now that things were settling down, it was irksome in the extreme to patrol the country unceasingly without ever catching sight of an enemy. Ferrers panted against the quietness which Major Keeling’s rigorous rule was already establishing on both sides of the border. He would have preferred the system prevailing in the neighbouring province, where a raid on the part of the tribes was answered by a British counter-raid, when villages were burnt, crops destroyed, and women and children dismissed homeless to the hills, the troops retiring again immediately to their base of operations until the tribes had recovered strength sufficiently for the whole thing to be gone through again. It was a poor thing to nip raids in the bud, or arrest them when they were only just begun: a big raid, followed by big reprisals, was the sort of thing that lent zest to frontier-life and stimulated promotion. However, Major Keeling’s whole soul was set against thrilling experiences of this kind, and Ferrers was forced to submit. But his love of fighting was as strong as ever, and had led to the very awkward and unfortunate incident which he was now to do his best to explain at Alibad, whither he had been called by a peremptory summons.

The root, occasion, or opportunity of all crime on the border at this time was the practice of carrying arms, which had grown up among the inhabitants during many years of oppression from above and incursions from without. Now that protection was assured them, the custom was unnecessary and dangerous, and any man appearing with weapons was liable to have them confiscated—the people grumbling, but submitting. Hence, when word was brought to Ferrers that a company of armed men had been seen traversing the lands of one of the villages in his charge, it was natural to conclude that they were raiders from beyond the border, who had escaped the vigilance of the patrols, and hoped to harry the countryside. Ferrers at once started in pursuit, and the armed men, their weapons laid aside, were discovered in the village cornfields, busily engaged in gathering in the crop. The impudence displayed fired Ferrers, and he ordered his men to charge. His daffadar, a veteran soldier, ventured to advise delay and a parley, but he refused to listen. He meant to make an example of this party of robbers, not to offer them terms, and a moment later his troopers were riding down the startled reapers. These made no attempt to resist, though they filled the air with protests, and before the troop could wheel and ride through them again, a voice reached Ferrers’ ear which turned him sick with horror.

“Sahib! sahib!” it cried, “we are the Sarkar’s poor ryots! Why do you kill us?”

This time the parley was granted, and Ferrers learned too late that the men he had attacked were the inhabitants of the village to which the field belonged, that they had brought their weapons with them owing to a warning that the people of another village intended to attack them and carry off their harvest, and that the second village had revenged itself for its disappointment by sending Ferrers the information which had led him wrong. There was nothing to be done but to rebuke the village elders severely for not warning him of the intended attack instead of taking the law into their own hands, assuage the sufferings of the wounded by distributing among them all the money he had about him, and return drearily to Shah Nawaz to draw up a report of the occurrence. It was his luck all over, he told himself, ignoring the reminder that he had not attempted to avert the fight—in fact, that he had hurried it on for the mere sake of fighting. It was all the fault of the life at this wretched outpost, where there was nothing a man could do but fight, and that was forbidden him. It was little comfort to remember that Major Keeling, in his place, would have found the day all too short for the innumerable things to be done. He would have been in the saddle from morning till night, visiting the villages, holding impromptu courts of justice, looking for traces of old irrigation-works or planning new ones, and filling up any odds and ends of time by instituting shooting-competitions among his troopers, or making experiments in gardening. Ferrers was a very different man from his Commandant, though he could be brave enough when there was fighting to be done, and owed his captaincy to his gallantry on a hard-won field. Without the stimulus of excitement he was prone to fits of indolence, when the monotonous round of daily duty was intolerably irksome; and he was further handicapped by the fact that whereas the change to the frontier had been intended to cut him off from his old life, he had, unknown to the older men who were trying to direct his course anew, succeeded in bringing a portion of his past with him.

The fashion among the young officers at Bab-us-Sahel at this time might be said to run in the direction of slumming. The example had been set a year or two before by a young man of brilliant talents and unscrupulous audacity, whose delight it was to escape from civilisation and live among the natives as one of themselves. This man was the despair of his seniors, but in the course of his escapades he contrived to pick up much curious and some useful information. To follow in his footsteps meant to defy the authorities now and possibly gain credit later, and this was sufficiently good reason for doing so. In the case of men of less brilliance or less audacity the natural result was merely to lead them into places they had much better have shunned, and acquaint them with persons whom it would have been wiser not to know. Ferrers was one of those who had followed the pioneer’s example without gaining the slightest advantage, and he knew this; so that when the chance of freeing himself came to him, he was almost ready to welcome it. Almost, but not quite. It so happened that a rule had lately been introduced requiring a literary knowledge of the local language from officers employed in the province. Major Keeling, while remarking to Ferrers, with his usual contempt for the actions of his official superiors, that in his opinion a colloquial acquaintance with it was all that was really needed, advised him to take a munshi with him to Shah Nawaz, and employ his leisure there in study. No sooner had the advice been given than the munshi presented himself in the person of one of Ferrers’ disreputable associates, the Mirza Fazl-ul-Hacq. Originally a Mohammedan religious teacher, this man was in some way under a cloud, and was regarded by his co-religionists much as an unfrocked clergyman would be in England. This fact was in itself an attraction to Ferrers and the young men of his stamp, to whom there was an actual delight in finding that one who ought to be holy had gone wrong, and the Mirza professed a strong attachment to him in return. Now he begged to be allowed to accompany him to the frontier as his munshi, asserting, with perfect truth, that he was well acquainted with all the dialects in use there. Ferrers, who had begun to look back regretfully at the pleasures from which he was to be torn, closed with the offer, and the Mirza was duly enrolled in his retinue. The two were closeted together in all Ferrers’ hours of leisure at Shah Nawaz, but remarkably little study was accomplished. The Mirza was an adept at various games of chance, he brewed delicious sherbets (not without the assistance of beverages forbidden by his religion), and he was a fascinating story-teller. Thoroughly worthless as Ferrers knew him to be, the man had made himself necessary to him, and he half hated, half condoned, the fact. When a fellow led such a dog’s life, how could he refuse any chance of congenial companionship that offered itself?

It might have been objected that Ferrers was within riding distance of Alibad, and that there was no law cutting him off from his friends there; but since Colin and Penelope Ross had come up-country he had avoided the place as if it were plague-stricken. Lady Haigh had been quite right in her interpretation of his feelings, and though he had succeeded in winning over Colin to plead his cause with Penelope, he now wondered gloomily why he could not have let well alone. He was always acting on impulse, he told himself, in a way that his cooler judgment disapproved, and it did not occur to him that he had to thank the Mirza’s influence over him for this fresh change. In fact, he was not conscious of it, for the subject was never mentioned between them; but in the Mirza’s society he felt no desire for that of his old friends. He had a real fondness for Colin, the one man of his acquaintance who believed in him, though he found it terribly fatiguing to keep up in his company the pretence of being so much better than he was. Colin had no idea of his real tastes and pursuits, and, curious though it may seem, Ferrers was prepared to take a good deal of trouble to prevent his becoming aware of them. The thought that Colin’s eyes would never rest upon him in kindness again was intolerable; and if Colin alone had been concerned, his mind would have been at ease. But if he married Penelope, he must either give up the Mirza, or she must know, and therefore Colin would know, a good many things he would prefer to keep secret—and what counterbalancing advantage would there be? Though he had felt his interest in her revive when he saw her admired and courted, she was not the type of woman who could keep him in thrall: she would suffer in silence, and look at him reproachfully with eyes that were like Colin’s, and there would be little pleasure in that.

At this point Ferrers’ meditations were suddenly interrupted. Intent upon his mental problem, it was with a shock that he found himself confronted by a trooper of the Khemistan Horse. He tried to discover what emergency could have dictated the posting of vedettes at this distance from the town, but learned only that it was the Doctor Sahib’s order. Wondering vaguely whether there was plague in the district, and the doctor was establishing a sanitary cordon, he rode on, to see more vedettes in the distance, and to be sharply challenged by a sentry as he entered the town. The squalid streets seemed wholly destitute of the military element which usually gave them brightness; but in the courtyard of the mud building which served as a hospital Dr Tarleton was hard at work drilling a motley band of convalescents and hospital assistants, with a stiffening of dismounted troopers, who appeared to be bored to extinction by the proceedings.

“What’s up, Tarleton?” cried Ferrers, after watching in bewilderment the strange evolutions of the corps and their instructor’s energetic endeavours to get them straight.

Hearing the voice, Dr Tarleton turned round and hurried to the wall, wiping his face as he came. “Oh, the Chief and all the rest are away, and I’m in charge. Nothing like being prepared for the worst, you know. This is my volunteer force—the Alibad Fencibles. I say, tell me the right word, there’s a good fellow! I’ve got ’em all massed in that corner, and I can’t get ’em out without going back to the beginning.”

Ferrers whispered two or three words into the doctor’s ear, watched him write them down, and rode on towards the fort, taking some comfort in the thought that his unpleasant interview with Major Keeling must necessarily be postponed. It was clear that it was his duty to pay his respects to the ladies, and by good luck it was just calling-time.

Lady Haigh and Penelope had now been two or three months at Alibad, and the heat and burning winds of the shadeless desert were leaving their mark upon them. Both had lost their colour, and even Lady Haigh moved languidly, while Penelope was propped up with cushions in a long chair. She had had a sharp attack of fever, and Ferrers, with an inward shudder, wondered how he could have thought her handsome when she landed. But both ladies were unfeignedly pleased to see him, principally because they were glad of anything that would divert their thoughts; and he experienced a pleasant sense of contentment and wellbeing on finding himself established in the dark cool room, with two women to talk to him. He found that the station had been bereft of almost the whole of its defenders for nearly twenty-four hours. Two nights ago Sir Dugald had started with a small force in pursuit of a band of Nalapuri raiders who were reported to be ravaging the most fertile part of the border, and yesterday an urgent message had come from him asking for reinforcements and Major Keeling’s presence.

“But if Haigh and his guns are gone out, it must be a big affair,” said Ferrers.

“Oh no, the guns are left at home,” said Lady Haigh. “All of us are people of all work here. Sir Dugald digs canals, and Captain Porter conducts cavalry reconnaissances, and Major Keeling works the guns——”

“And the doctor drills the awkward squad,” supplied Ferrers. “What a lively time you seem to have!”

“Oh well, that was more at first. Then there was scarcely a night without an alarm, and we used to hear the troops clattering out of the town at all hours after bands of raiders. There are plenty of alarms still, but generally in the daytime. Two villages have quarrelled over their lands, or some ryots have objected to the survey or resisted the digging of the canal, and Major Keeling is wanted to put things right.”

“But how calmly you speak of it! You and Pen—Miss Ross—must be perfect heroines,” said Ferrers. It was clear that Lady Haigh did not intend to leave him alone with Penelope, and with a resentment which had in it more than a touch of relief, he set himself to tease her. “How pleased Haigh must be to know that, whatever is happening to him, you are just as quiet and happy as if you were at home!”

The malice in his tone was evident, and Lady Haigh knew that he guessed at the terrors of those broken nights, when Sir Dugald was summoned away on dangerous duties, and she brought her bed into Penelope’s room, and they trembled and prayed together till daylight. But she had no intention of confessing her weakness, and answered quickly—

“Of course he is. How clever of you to have gauged him so well!”

“And do tell me what you find to do,” asked Ferrers lazily. “At Bab-us-Sahel you used to be great at gardening.”

“Yes, until you rode across my flower-beds and ruined them,” retorted Lady Haigh. “You won’t find any opportunity of doing that here. Oh, we have only poor silly little things to do compared with the constant activity and splendid exploits of you gentlemen. We look after the servants, of course, and try to invent food enough to keep the household from starvation; and we get out the back numbers of the ‘Ladies’ Repository’ and the ‘Family Friend,’ and follow the fancy-work patterns; and we read all the books and papers that come to the station, and sometimes try very hard to improve our minds with the standard works Miss Ross brought out with her; and in the evening we go out in our palkis to inspect the progress of the building and road-making, and offer any foolish suggestions that may occur to us. I think that’s all.”

“But what a life! and in the hot weather, too! Why don’t you go to the Hills, as the Punjab ladies do?”

“The Punjab ladies may, if their husbands can afford it. Have you any idea what it would cost to go to the Hills, or even down to Bab-us-Sahel, from here?”

“But why come here, then? What good does it do? Of course”—for Lady Haigh was beginning to look dangerous—“it’s delightful for Haigh to have you, and all that; but you won’t tell me he’s such a selfish chap that he wouldn’t rather know you were comparatively cool and comfortable down by the sea? You can’t make me believe it’s his doing.”

“No,” snapped Lady Haigh, “it’s ours. We are here for the good of the station. We are civilisation, society—refinement, if you like. We keep the gentlemen from getting into nasty jungly ways. You are looking rather jungly yourself.” She delivered this home-thrust suddenly, and Ferrers realised that his aspect was somewhat careless and unkempt for the place in which he found himself. “We keep things up to the standard, you see.”

“Ah, but I have no one to keep me up to the standard,” he pleaded. “Out at my place there’s no one to speak to and nothing to do.”

“Then I wonder you chose to go there,” was the sharp retort.

“There was plenty to do just at first, but my rascals are quiet enough now. A good many of them are dead, for one thing. You heard of our big fight before you came up—with a raiding-party six hundred strong? I had to send here for help, worse luck! but even when the reinforcements came up we were so few that the fellows actually stood to receive us. We charged through them again and again—I never remember a finer fight—and there were very few of them left afterwards.”

“You speak as if you liked it!” said Penelope, with a shudder.

“Like it? it’s the finest thing in life—the only thing worth living for. You see a great big brute of a Malik coming at you with a curved tulwar just sweeping down. You try to parry, or fire your Colt point-blank into his face, and for the moment you can’t quite decide whether you are dead or the Malik, until you suddenly realise that your horse is carrying you on towards another fellow, and the Malik is down. Splendid is no word for it!”

“Don’t!” said Lady Haigh sharply. “You’ll make Miss Ross ill again. What’s that?” as a long-drawn, quavering cry seemed to descend from the upper air, “Mem Sahib, the regiment returns!”

Lady Haigh sprang up, and was rushing out of the room, when she suddenly remembered Penelope, and ran back to her. “Yes, I’ll help you, Pen—how selfish of me! It’s our chaprasi,” she explained hurriedly to Ferrers. “I stationed him on the tower above this to watch for any one who might be coming. He was horribly frightened, and said he knew he should fall down and be killed; but of course I was not going to give in to that. Carry this cushion up for Miss Ross, please. There’s a doorway on the ramparts where she can sit in the shade.”

Ferrers followed obediently, as Lady Haigh half helped, half dragged her friend up the narrow stairs, and, after allowing her one look at the moving cloud of dust, which was all that could be seen in the distance, established her in the doorway on the cushion, taking her own place at a telescope which was fixed on a stand.

“This is my own idea,” she said to Ferrers. “Now, why don’t you say I may justly be proud of it? I am as good as a sentry, I spend so much time up here scanning the desert. I’m glad they’re coming from that direction, for we shall be able to distinguish them so much sooner. They must pass us before getting into the town. Now I begin to see them. They have prisoners with them, Pen, and there are certainly fewer of them than started, but somehow they don’t look as if they had been fighting. No, I see what it is. There’s a whole squadron gone!”

“What!” cried Ferrers, who was standing by, unable to get a single glance through the telescope, which was monopolised by his hostess. “Clean gone, Lady Haigh? Must have been detached on special duty, surely? It couldn’t have been wiped out.”

“No, no, of course,” and Lady Haigh withdrew from the glass, and allowed him to look through it; “that must be it, but it gave me such a fright. But I saw Dugald and Colin, Pen, and the Chief. Muhabat Khan!” she called to the chaprasi, who descended slowly from the top of the tower, and stood before her in a submissive attitude but with an injured expression, “go and meet the regiment as it comes, and say to the Major Sahib that Ferrers Sahib is here, and that I should be glad if he and Ross Sahib will come in to tiffin with us. Now, Pen, I shall take you down again,” as the messenger departed. “Captain Ferrers will bring the cushion.”

Deposited in her chair once more, Penelope looked very white and exhausted, and Lady Haigh reproached herself loudly in the intervals of exchanging mysterious confidences with various servants.

“I ought never to have taken you up to the rampart,” she said; “but I knew you would like to see them ride in; and besides——” She checked herself, but Ferrers guessed that she had been afraid to leave Penelope alone lest he should try to speak to her, and he smiled as he thought how unnecessary her precautions were. But by this time there was a clatter of horses’ feet and accoutrements in the courtyard, and Sir Dugald ran up the steps and kissed his wife, who had sprung to the door to meet him.

“The Chief and Ross are here,” he said. “Glad you sent that message, Elma. You all right, Ferrers? Didn’t know you were coming in.”

Major Keeling and Colin Ross were mounting the steps with much clanking of spurs and scabbards; but it struck Ferrers, as he stood in the doorway, that his Commandant seemed suddenly to have remembered something, for as he reached the verandah he lifted his sword and held it in his hand, and walked with extreme care. After greeting Lady Haigh, he passed on into the room, and Ferrers observed with astonishment that the big man was evidently trying to step softly and speak low. It was not until Major Keeling bent over Penelope’s chair, and, taking her hand very gently, asked her how she was, that the watcher realised for whose sake these precautions were taken.

“I felt obliged to come in when I received the order from our beneficent tyrant over there,” said Major Keeling, in a voice which seemed to fill the room in spite of his best endeavours; “but if our presence disturbs you in the least, we will all go and tiffin at my quarters, and take Haigh off with us too.”

“Oh no, please!” entreated Penelope. “It will do me good, really. It is so nice to see you all back.”

There was a faint flush in her cheeks, which deepened when Major Keeling remarked upon it approvingly; and Ferrers remembered, with unreasonable anger, that her colour had not risen for him. It made her look pretty again at once, and that great lout the Chief (thus unflatteringly did he characterise his commanding officer) evidently thought so too. Once again the younger man was a prey to the curious form of jealousy which had led him into the impulsive action that he now regretted. Penelope, for her own sake, had little or no charm for him, but Penelope, admired by other men, became at once a prize worth claiming. Ferrers regretted his impulsive action no longer. His appeal to Colin had at any rate placed him in a position of superiority over any other man who might approach Penelope.

CHAPTER V.
COLIN AS AMBASSADOR.

“The curious thing was that we had no fighting,” said Major Keeling. They were seated at the luncheon-table, and Lady Haigh had imperiously demanded an account of the doings of the force since its departure.

“No fighting!” she cried reproachfully. “And you have kept us in agony two whole days while you went out for a picnic!”

“It was more than a picnic,” said her guest seriously. “It is one of the most mysterious things I have ever come across—a complete success, and yet not a matchlock fired, though every one and everything was ready for a big fight.”

“I must get to the bottom of this,” said Lady Haigh, with the little air of importance to which Major Keeling always yielded indulgently. “Let me hear about it from the beginning. Dugald, you don’t mean to say that you started out under false pretences when you told me you were going after a band of raiders?”

“Not at all,” answered Sir Dugald, with imperturbable good-humour. “We found the raiders, sure enough, at the village which gave the alarm. They had plundered the granaries, got the cattle together ready to drive off, and were just going to fire the place when we came up. It was rather fine when they realised it was the Khemistan Horse they had to deal with, and not a scratch lot of villagers, for they left the cattle and decamped promptly. Our only casualty was a trooper who came upon two laggards at bay in a corner, and tried to take them both prisoners. Of course we went after them, and several of the villagers, who had appeared miraculously from their hiding-places, came too. It was a long chase, and we stuck to them right up to the frontier. Well, we guessed that this was the band which has made its headquarters at Khudâdad Khan’s fortress, Dera Gul. The Amir of Nalapur has always protested his inability to catch and punish them, so, as we had caught them red-handed on our ground, I thought we would run them to earth. The raiding must be stopped somehow, and if the Amir can’t do it, he ought to be grateful to us for doing it for him.”

Major Keeling nodded emphatically. “If he doesn’t show proper gratitude, I’ll teach it him,” he said.

“They rode, and we rode,” Sir Dugald went on; “and as they had the start and travelled lighter, we had the pleasure of seeing them ride into Dera Gul and shut the door in our faces. When we summoned Khudâdad Khan to give them up, he told us to come and take them, and they jeered at us from the walls and bade us be thankful they let us go home safe. The place is abominably strong, and they had several cannon ready mounted, and plenty of men, so I thought the best thing I could do was to take up a position of observation, and send for reinforcements and the guns. But as I was writing my message, one of our friendly ryots advised me to send for Kīlin Sahib, and not trouble about the guns. ‘You will see that they’ll surrender to him,’ he said. I didn’t believe it, but he stuck to his text, and my ressaldar, Bakr Ali, agreed with him, though neither of them would give me any reason; so I added to my chit an entreaty that the Major would accompany the reinforcements if possible. And he came, saw, and conquered.”

“No thanks to myself,” said Major Keeling. “I summoned Khudâdad Khan to surrender, and he did so at once, with the worst possible grace, merely stipulating that he and his men should be considered our prisoners, and not handed over to Nalapur. I knew the Amir would be precious glad to get rid of them, so I consented. And after that—Haigh, you will agree with me that it was a queer sensation—we rode up into the fortress between the rows of scowling outlaws, spiked the five guns, took stock of the provisions, and left Harris and a squadron in charge of the place until we can hand it over to the Amir. The outlaws we brought back with us, and I mean to plant them out on the newly irrigated land to the west after they have served their sentences. ‘It was a famous victory.’”

“Yes, but how?—why?” cried Lady Haigh. “What made them surrender when they saw you?”

“If you could tell me that I should be much obliged. There’s a mystery somewhere, which is always cropping up, and this is part of it. Why, almost wherever I go, the Maliks and elders meet me as an old friend—no, not quite that, as a sort of superior being—and inform me with unction that all my orders are fulfilled already, and that they are ready to join me with all their fighting men as soon as I want them. It’s the same with the wild tribes, even those from over the frontier. Sometimes I have thought there must be a mistake somewhere, and asked them if they know who I am, and they say, ‘Oh yes, you are Sinjāj Kīlin Sahib, the ruler of the border for the Honourable Company,’ with a sort of foolish smirk, as if they expected me to be pleased. I can’t help thinking they are mistaking me for some one else.”

“Or some one supernatural—some one of whom they have heard prophecies,” suggested Lady Haigh breathlessly.

“But you can’t very well ask them that—whether they take you for Rustam come to life again—lest they should say they never thought of comparing you to any one of the kind,” said Ferrers. The tone, rather than the words, was offensive, but Major Keeling ignored it.

“But they do think something of the sort, I believe,” he said. “At least, when I was present at a tribal jirgah the other day, an old Malik from a distance remarked that as he had not seen me before, it would be very consoling to him if I would give a slight exhibition of my powers. He would not ask for anything elaborate—if I would just breathe fire for a minute or two, or something of that kind, it would be enough. I told him I wasn’t a mountebank, and the rest hustled and scolded him into silence. But after that very meeting another old fellow, who had been most forward in nudging the first one, and had looked tremendously knowing as he told him that fire-breathing was not a custom of the English, got hold of me alone, and whispered, ‘You won’t forget, Highness, that on the night of which I may not speak you promised I should ride at your right hand when the time comes?’ Without thinking, I said, ‘If the night is not to be spoken of, why do you speak of it?’ and the old fellow stammered, ‘Between you and me, I thought it was no harm, Heaven-born,’ and after that I could get no more out of him. Whatever I asked him, he thought I was trying to test him, and took a pride in keeping his mouth shut.”

“It really is most mysterious,” said Lady Haigh, “and might be most embarrassing. Do you think you go about paying visits to Maliks in your sleep, Major Keeling? Because, you see, you might do all sorts of queer things as well.”

“I know nothing whatever about it—it is totally inexplicable,” said Major Keeling shortly, rising as he spoke. “I am sorry to break up your party, Lady Haigh, but Captain Ferrers and I have some business together, and he ought to be on the way back to his station before very long.”

Seeing that he was not to escape, Ferrers followed the Commandant, and passed a highly unpleasant half-hour in his company. From a scathing rebuke of the criminal carelessness which had led to the late regrettable incident, Major Keeling passed to personalities.

“What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked sharply. “You ought to be as hard as nails with the life you lead at Shah Nawaz. But perhaps you don’t lead it. You look like a Bengal writer.”

“With this examination in view——” began Ferrers with dignity.

“Hang these examinations! They spoil the good men and make the bad ones worse. I’ll have no one up here who would sacrifice his real work to them. If you can’t keep your studies to the hot hours, when you young fellows think it’ll kill you to go out, better give them up. Your munshi must be a queer sort if he’s willing to work all day with you. Who is he, by the bye? Fazl-ul-Hacq?—not one of the regular Bab-us-Sahel munshis, surely? Next time you come in, make some excuse to bring him with you, and I’ll have a look at him. He never seems to be forthcoming when I hunt you up at Shah Nawaz, and when a man keeps out of sight in that way it doesn’t look well. You think he’s all right, I suppose?”

Now was Ferrers’ chance. With one effort he might break with his old life and throw off the Mirza’s yoke, exchanging his solitary indolence at Shah Nawaz for the incessant activity which was the portion of all who worked under Major Keeling’s own eye. But to do this he must confess to the man he disliked that he felt himself unfit for responsibility, and that he had practically betrayed the trust reposed in him. Moreover, not a man in the province but would believe he had been deprived of his command as a punishment. This thought was decisive, and he answered quickly—

“Yes, sir; I believe he is an excellent teacher, and he makes himself useful as a clerk when I want one.”

“Well, don’t let him become indispensable. That plays the very mischief with these fellows. They think they’ve got the Sahib under their thumb, and can do as they like, and very often, when it’s too late, the Sahib finds out that it’s true. Give your man his rukhsat [leave to depart] in double quick time if you see that he’s inclined to presume.”

Wondering savagely what Major Keeling would think of the actual terms which prevailed between Fazl-ul-Hacq and his employer, Ferrers acquiesced with outward meekness, and took his leave. Colin Ross had promised to accompany him part of the way back, and with a couple of troopers as escort they rode out into the desert. As they passed the hospital, Dr Tarleton appeared on the verandah, and shook his fist at Ferrers.

“You rascal!” he cried. “Those words of command you gave me were all humbug. Just wait until I get you in hospital!”

“What does he mean?” asked Colin, as Ferrers rode on laughing.

“Oh, he was trying to drill a lot of non-combatants this morning, and asked me how to get them out of a corner. Of course I favoured him with a few directions, with the result that his squad got more gloriously mixed up than ever. Only wish I had seen them!”

“Tarleton is a good fellow,” said Colin, with apparent irrelevance.

“Don’t be a prig, young ’un. Must have a bit of fun sometimes. What is a man to do, stuck down in a desert under a commandant who’s either a scoundrel or silly?”

“You mean what the Major was telling us at tiffin? But it’s perfectly true: they did surrender the moment they saw him.”

“I daresay. He has carefully circulated all these rumours about his miraculous powers, and then pretends to be surprised that the niggers believe them. He’s a blatant theatrical egotist—a regular old Crummles. ‘I can’t think who puts these things in the papers. I don’t.’ Oh no, of course not!”

“If you mean that Major Keeling is a hypocrite, I don’t agree with you.”

“Now don’t get white-hot. If he isn’t, then he has read Scott till his brain is turned. You’re such an innocent that you don’t see the man does everything for effect. His appearance, his perpetual squabbles with headquarters, his popularity-hunting up here, the idiotic things he does—they’re all calculated to produce an impression, to make the unsophisticated stare, in fact. Why, one of my patrols came across him riding alone at midnight not long ago, miles away from here. The man must be either mad or a fool.”

The Advanced-Guard

TheAdvanced-Guard

CONTENTS.