the
railings and declaring that she, for her part, was going to faint.

Mrs. Treacher caught her as she dropped, and with Miss Gabriel's help
supported her up the slope to the Barracks, less than fifty yards
above.

"The Barracks?" exclaimed Miss Gabriel, halting as Mrs. Treacher's
lantern revealed to her through the fast-thinning fog a portion of the
whitewashed facade. "Oh, but I couldn't--on any account whatever!"

"You'll have to," answered Mrs. Treacher, shortly, "that is, unless
you'd rather have her laid outside on the bare road, and in a dead
faint, too."

Indeed, Mrs. Pope was in a state of collapse that silenced all
scruples. Mrs. Treacher--a powerfully-built woman--caught up the all
but inanimate lady in both arms, and bore her into the passage, nodding
to Miss Gabriel to unhitch from its nail a lamp which hung, backed by a
tin reflector, just within the doorway.

"Unhasp the door to the left, please. We'll rest her down in the
Commandant's parlour. There's a sofa--though he do mostly use to keep
his books and papers upon it." She laid down her burden. "Oh, you
needn't fear to look about you! The men folk be all off to the wreck,
and won't be back till Lord knows when."

Miss Gabriel, however, was not looking about her. Her gaze, following
the ray of the lamp as she held it aloft, travelled across the stooping
shoulders of Mrs. Treacher and fastened itself upon a garment of
gaudily-striped woolwork--her antimacassar--lying across the arm of the
sofa where the Commandant had tossed it impatiently.

"Terribly messy a man always is when left to himself," said Mrs.
Treacher, rising and stepping to a corner cupboard. "If he keeps such a
thing as a drop of brandy on the premises, it'll be here, I reckon."

But the cupboard was empty. For the sternest of reasons the Commandant
had, for two or three years past, denied himself the taste of strong
waters.

Mrs. Treacher passed the back of her hand across the bridge of her
nose. "I'll step over to the Castle," she announced, "for a drop of gin
I keep against Treacher's attacks." (Let not Mrs. Treacher's idiom
frighten the reader. She meant only that her husband suffered from an
internal trouble which need not be specified, and that she kept the gin
by her as a precaution.)

"And there's a quill pen of the Commandant's on the writing-table," she
added; "if you'll burn the feather of it under her nose."

She bustled off. Miss Gabriel stepped to the table, pi