oom spoke to him eloquently of the
man he had not seen for a year. Since his departure on furlough the
battery had changed stations, marching across sixty miles of sand
desert from Bunnoo to Dera Ishmael Khan, familiarly known as "Dera
Dismal," a straggling station a few miles beyond the Indus.

Richardson had arrived from Bombay late that evening, just in time to
change and hurry across to the station mess. To his surprise Lenox had
not put in an appearance at the mess table, and Richardson,
anticipating fever,--the curse of frontier life,--had left early,
inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the
threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses.
Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if
Lenox--the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse--were actually dining out.

He approached the snoring Pathan and roused him, not ungently, with the
toe of his boot. The native sprang up, fumbled at his disarranged
turban, salaamed deeply, and finally stood upright, a splendid figure
of a man, six feet of him, if his peaked turban were taken into
account--hard, wiry, with aquiline features, grey beard, and eyes keen
as a sword-thrust; a man without knowledge of fear, cunning and
implacable in hatred, but staunchly devoted to the Englishman he
served, who, in his eyes, was the first of living men.

"The Captain Sahib--where is he?" Richardson demanded in the vernacular.

"At Desmond Sahib's bungalow for dinner. By eleven o'clock he
returneth. Your Honour will await his coming?"

"Decidedly."

Zyarulla turned up the lamp, and proceeded to set whisky, soda-water,
and a tumbler among his master's scattered papers. Brutus, at the
sound of a remembered voice, tapped the cane chair vigorously with his
stump of a tail, without offering to relinquish the one comfortable
seat in the room. Richardson sat down beside him, caressed the strong
ugly head, and lit a cigar.

The Pathan withdrew, leaving him alone with the dog and the whisky
bottle, from which he helped himself liberally. Then, drawing one of
the closely written sheets of paper towards him, he fell to reading it
with interest and attention. It was a minute geographical record of a
recent journey through tracts of mountain country hitherto unexplored,
a journey which had gained Lenox the letters C.I.E. after his name.
Richardson, while failing to emulate the older man's zeal for
wanderings that cut him off for