with great bounds down the hill. They were shooting at
him, but he heeded them not. For the space of a minute he was out of
sight, and his whereabouts was shown only by the patter of bullets.

Then he came back--walking quite slowly up the last slope, and he was
carrying something in his arms. The enemy fired no more; they realized
what had happened.

He laid his burden down gently in a corner of the _castrol_. The cap
had fallen off, and the hair was breaking loose. The face was very
white but there was no wound or bruise on it.

'She was killed at once,' I heard him saying. 'Her back was broken by
a shell-fragment. Dick, we must bury her here ... You see, she ...
she liked me. I can make her no return but this.'

We set the Companions to guard, and with infinite slowness, using our
hands and our knives, we made a shallow grave below the eastern
parapet. When it was done we covered her face with the linen cloak
which Sandy had worn that morning. He lifted the body and laid it
reverently in its place.

'I did not know that anything could be so light,' he said.

It wasn't for me to look on at that kind of scene. I went to the
parapet with Blenkiron's field-glasses and had a stare at our friends
on the road. There was no Turk there, and I guessed why, for it would
not be easy to use the men of Islam against the wearer of the green
ephod. The enemy were German or Austrian, and they had a field-gun.
They seemed to have got it laid on our fort; but they were waiting. As
I looked I saw behind them a massive figure I seemed to recognize.
Stumm had come to see the destruction of his enemies.

To the east I saw another gun in the fields just below the main road.
They had got us on both sides, and there was no way of escape. Hilda
von Einem was to have a noble pyre and goodly company for the dark
journey.

Dusk was falling now, a clear bright dusk where the stars pricked
through a sheen of amethyst. The artillery were busy all around the
horizon, and towards the pass on the other road, where Fort Palantuken
stood, there was the dust and smoke of a furious bombardment. It seemed
to me, too, that the guns on the other fronts had come nearer. Deve
Boyun was hidden by a spur of hill, but up in the north, white clouds,
like the streamers of evening, were hanging over the Euphrates glen.
The whole firmament hummed and twanged like a taut string that has been
struck ...

As I looked, the gun to the west fir