be indefinitely trusted,
so that he would say nothing to stop them. Lionel himself was wild with
delight, and the whole affair was managed without suspicion, resentment,
or hostility.

The expedition was quite as hard as the authorities had intimated, and
at one point it very nearly proved fatal. A bad attack of dysentery and
snow blindness brought Lionel down at a very inconvenient spot, crossing
the mountains of Tibet during a blizzard. The rest of the party said
with some truth that they must go forward or perish. Winn sent them on
to the next settlement, keeping back a few stores and plenty of
cartridges. He said that he would rejoin them with Drummond when
Drummond was better, and if he did not arrive before a certain date they
were to push on without him.

They were alone together for six weeks, and during these six weeks Winn
discovered that he was quite a new kind of person; for one thing he
developed into a first-rate nurse, and he could be just like a mother,
and say the silliest, gentlest things. No one was there to see or hear
him, and the boy was so ill that he wouldn't be likely to remember
afterwards. He did remember, however, he remembered all his life. The
stores ran out and they were dependent on Winn's rifle for food. They
melted snow water to drink, and there were days when their chances
looked practically invisible.

Somehow or other they got out of it, the boy grew better, the weather
improved, and Winn managed, though the exact means were never specified,
to drag Lionel on a sledge to the nearest settlement, where the rest of
the party were still awaiting them.

After that the expedition was successful and the friendship between the
two men final. Winn didn't like to think what Mrs. Drummond would say to
him when they got back to England, but she let him down quite easily;
she gave him no thanks, she only looked at him with Lionel's steady eyes
and said, smiling a little, "I always knew you'd bring him back to me."

Winn did not ask Lionel to stay at Staines Court until the wedding. None
of the Staines went in much for making friends, and he didn't want his
mother to see that he was fond of any one.

The night before the wedding, however, Lionel arrived in the midst of an
altercation as to who had ordered the motor to meet the wrong train.

This lasted a long time because all the Staines, except Dolores, were
gathered together, and it expanded unexpectedly into an attack on
Charles, the el