foregone for these lesser pleasures, and she very speedily decided to
sacrifice all social entertainments to which he could not accompany
her. She rode with him, camped with him, and became his inseparable
companion. Undeveloped in many ways, shy in the presence of strangers,
she soon forgot her earlier ambition to see the world and all that it
contained. Her father's society was to her all-sufficing, and it was
no sacrifice to her to withdraw herself from the gay crowd and dwell
apart with him.

He had no wish to monopolise her, but it was a relief to him that the
constant whirl of pleasure about her attracted her so little. He liked
to have her with him, and it soon became a matter of course that she
should accompany him on all his expeditions. She revelled in his tours
of inspection. They were so many picnics to her, and she enjoyed them
with the zest of a child.

And so it came to pass that she was with him among the hills of the
frontier when, like a pent flood suddenly escaping, the storm of
rebellion broke and seethed about them, threatening them with total
annihilation.

No serious trouble had been anticipated. A certain tract of country
had been reported unquiet, and General Roscoe had been ordered to
proceed thither on a tour of inspection and also, to a very mild
degree, of intimidation. Marching through the district from fort to
fort, he had encountered no shadow of opposition. All had gone well.
And then, his work over, and all he set out to do satisfactorily
accomplished, his face towards India and his back to the mountains,
the unexpected had come upon him like a thunderbolt.

Hordes of tribesmen, gathered Heaven knew how or whence, had suddenly
burst upon him from the south, had cut off his advance by sheer
immensity of numbers, and, hemming him in, had forced him gradually
back into the mountain fastnesses through which he had just passed
unmolested.

It was a stroke so wholly new, so subtly executed, that it had won
success almost before the General had realised the weight of the
disaster that had come upon him. He had believed himself at first to
be involved in a mere fray with border thieves. But before he reached
the fort upon which he found himself obliged to fall back, he knew
that he had to cope with a general rising of the tribes, and that the
means at his disposal were as inadequate to stem the rising flood of
rebellion as a pebble thrown into a mountain stream to check its flow.

The