la told me what happened," he said, a great gentleness in his
voice. "Come on to your room, old man. Take a rousing dose of
phenacetin, and lie down till tiffin. I'll bring you a lime-squash."

"Thanks. You are a damned good sort, Desmond. The sun's touched me
up, I fancy. I shall be all right in a couple at hours."

But before two hours were out, Desmond's orderly was speeding through
the dust to the Doctor Sahib's house; and Desmond himself had gone
hurriedly to his wife's room, where she too was lying down after her
morning's duties. She rose at his coming, holding out both hands. For
she read disaster in his eyes.

"Darling, what has gone wrong?"

"It's Lenox. He's down with it. Not severe as yet. But there's no
mistaking what it is."

Her faint colour--it had grown perceptibly fainter in the past
week--left her face.

"Oh, his poor wife! We must send a wire at once."

"I've sent one already, by the orderly who went for Courtenay. Told
her she should have news every day, for the present."

"Oh, bless you, Theo! You think of everything!"

"Steady, Honor, steady," he rebuked her gently. "We've got to do a
fair share of thinking between us just now. Paul can safely stay on if
one isolates that side of the house; and Zyarulla and I can do
everything for Lenox between us. As for you, John must give you a bed
till we're through."

"But, Theo . . ."

"Be quiet!" he broke in almost roughly; adding on a changed note: "For
once in a way, my dearest, you will obey orders without question--or go
altogether. Now give me the chlorodyne, and let me get back to poor
Lenox. Seems brutal to give him any form of opium after all he's been
through. Hullo, there's Richardson shouting outside. He'll be
terribly cut up when he knows."

It transpired that Richardson had come over, post-haste, to report
three cases among his men; and at sun-down the little mountain battery,
with its three subalterns and full camp equipment, marched out into the
open desert, scornfully overlooked by that Pisgah height of the
Frontier, the Takti Suliman, whose square-cut crags were printed in
sharp outline upon a stainless sky.

[1] Pull.

CHAPTER XX.

"Passion has but one cry, one only;--Oh to touch thee, my beloved!"
--Olive Schreiner.

Asiatic cholera is as capricious as a woman; capricious both as to her
choice of victims, and as to the grisly fashion of her wooing. In one
mood she will kill