grant it!" breathed Sister Tobias behind them. But Saxham had
forgotten her. The fountains of his deep were broken up and words came
rushing from him.

"I think that day will come, Lynette. I believe that day will come," he
said, holding the beautiful vague gaze with his. "If every drop in these
veins of mine, poured out, could bring it more quickly, it should be
hastened so; if every faculty of my body, every cell in my brain, bent to
the achievement of one end, expended to the last unit of energy, in the
restoration of what is infinitely dearer to me than life--than a hundred
lives, if I had them to devote!--could insure its dawning, and bring the
light of Reason and Memory and Hope into these beloved eyes again----"

A sob tore its way through the Doctor's great frame. He rose up abruptly
and hurried away.

LIV

A deadly lassitude, both physical and mental, had settled down upon the
men and women of the garrison. They knew that Brounckers had gone south,
leaving General Huysmans in command of the investing forces. They knew
that the rainy season brought them fever, for they shivered and burned
with it, and they knew that the scanty rations of coarse and unpalatable
food were getting smaller every day.

But they were conscious of these things in a dull way, and as though they
affected people who were a long distance off. One day, when for the
thousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was in
sight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a
poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a brief
flicker of excitement. Mounted men rode out in force, guns were limbered
up and galloped out north and west, to divert General Huysmans' attention,
and give Grumer, conjectured to be waiting for it, the opportunity for an
eagle-like swoop down upon the harassed tortoise sprawling on her
sand-hills. But the rainy dark came down upon the clatter of artillery,
and the shining dawn crept up and brought the cruel news that the allies
had really been beaten back; and if there was any doubt of that, it was
dissipated at the day's end when one of the Red Cross waggons came
rumbling back out of the sloppy twilight, bringing Three Messengers to
confirm the tale.

They were eloquent enough, even in their speechlessness, those three dead
troopers, whose boots and coats were missing, and whose pockets had been
turned inside out. Not a man of them was known to any member o