rocks where many another had perished before him.

The surging sounded louder. It seemed to be in his brain. It bewildered
him, deprived him of the power to think. A great many voices seemed to
clamour around him, but only one could be clearly heard; only one, and
that the voice of a child close to him--or was that also an illusion born
of the racking strain that had driven all the blood to his head?

"You won't fail me, will you?" it said.

Surely his grasp was slackening, his powers were passing, when like a
flashlight those words illuminated his brain. He was as one in deep
waters, swamped and sinking; but that voice called him back.

He opened his eyes, he drew a great breath. He flung his whole soul into
one last great effort. He remembered suddenly that the little English
girl, the child with the glorious hair and laughing eyes, his
acquaintance of an hour, would be looking for him exactly two weeks from
that moment. He was sure she would look, and--she would be disappointed
if she looked in vain. One must not disappoint a child.

The memory of her went through him, vivid, enchanting, compelling. It
nerved his sinking heart. It renewed his grip on life. It urged him
upwards.

Only a child! Only a child! But yet--

"I shall not--shall not--fail you!" he gasped, and with the words his
knees reached the top of the cliff.

His strength collapsed instantly, like the snapping of a fiddle-string.
He fell forward on his face, and lay prone...

A little later he worked the whole of his body into security, rolled over
on his back with closed eyes to the sky, and waited while his heart
slowed down to its normal rhythmic beat.

At last, quite suddenly, he sat up and looked around him. The laughter
flashed back into his eyes. He sprang to his feet, mud-stained,
dishevelled, yet exultant.

He clicked his heels together and faced the sinking sun, slim and
upright, one stiff hand to his head. He had diced with the gods, and he
had won.

"_Destinee! Je te salue!_" he said, and the next instant whizzed smartly
round with a soldier's precision of movement and marched away towards the
fortress that crowned the hill above the rocks of Valpre.

CHAPTER III

A ROPE OF SAND

Undoubtedly Mademoiselle Gautier was querulous, and equally without doubt
she had good reason to be so; but it made it a little dull for Chris.
Accidents would happen, wherever one went, and what was the good of
making a fuss?

Of course,