motionless that Al'mah and
Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah
took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick,
noiseless steps, left the room.

What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come.

Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time.

"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written
self-control.

"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It
will help him."

He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of
pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another room.

There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips.

She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white and
still upon the coverlet.

At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would
reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from
the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half
raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A light
transfigured his face.

"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly down.

"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"THE ROAD IS CLEAR"

The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and
glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an
emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from
Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the
petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its
improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain,
where she guarded the jewels of her honour.

The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and
drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills
from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup
of trembling, the wine of loss.

As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of
brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets
of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to
bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the
Day Path and took the Night Road.

Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with
bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the resurrection
and the life"--the