t to him shivering, thankful for the shielding arm he threw
around her.

"The sunrise can't be far off," he said. "I expect you are hungry,
aren't you?"

She was very hungry, and he put a biscuit into her hand. The very fact
of eating there in the darkness in some measure reassured her. She ate
several biscuits, and began to feel much better.

"Getting warmer?" questioned Nick. "Let me feel your hands." They were
still cold, and he took them and thrust them down against his breast.
She shrank a little at the touch of his warm flesh.

"It will make you so cold," she murmured.

But he only laughed at her softly, and pressed them closer. "I am not
easily chilled," he said. "Besides, it's sleeping that makes you cold.
And I haven't slept."

Muriel heard the news with astonishment. She was no longer angry with
Nick, and her fears of him were dormant. Though she would never forget
and might never forgive his treachery, he was her sole protector in
that wilderness of many terrors, and she lacked the resolution to keep
him at arm's length. There was, moreover, something comforting in his
presence, something that vastly reassured her, making her lean upon
him almost in spite of herself.

"Haven't you slept at all?" she asked him in wonder. "How in the world
did you keep awake?"

He did not answer her, only laughed again as though at some secret
joke. He seemed to be in rather good spirits, she noticed, and she
marvelled at him with a heavy pain at her heart that was utterly
beyond expression or relief.

She sat silent for a little, then at length withdrew her hands,
assuring him that they were quite warm.

"And I want to talk to you," she added, in a more practical tone than
she had previously managed to assume. "Mr. Ratcliffe, you may be in
command of this expedition, but I think you ought to tell me your
plans."

"Call me Nick, won't you?" he said. "It'll make things easier. You are
quite welcome to know my plans, such as they are. I haven't managed
to develop anything very ingenious during all these hours. You see we
are, to a certain extent, at the mercy of circumstances. This place
isn't more than a dozen miles from the fort, and the hills all round
are infested with tribesmen. I hoped at first that we should get clear
in the night, but you were asleep, and on the whole it seemed best to
lie up for another day. We might make a bolt for it to-morrow night if
all goes well. I have a sort of instinct for these m