t through her. She
felt her very heart turn cold.

Shivering, she seized a wrap, and crept to the tent-entrance. The flap
was unfastened, just as it had been left by her husband the night
before. With shaking fingers she drew it aside and looked forth.

The hubbub of voices had died down to awed whisperings. A group of
coolies huddled in the open space before her like an assembly of monkeys
holding an important discussion.

Further away, with distorted limbs and grim, impassive countenance,
crouched the black-bearded beggar whose importunity had lured Ralph from
her side the previous evening. His red-rimmed, sunken eyes gazed like
the eyes of a dead man straight into the sunrise. So motionless were
they, so utterly void of expression, that she thought they must be
blind. There was something fateful, something terrible in the aloofness
of him. It was as if an invisible circle surrounded him within which
none might intrude.

And close at hand--so close that she could have touched his turbaned
head as she stood--the great Sikh bearer, Peter, sat huddled in a heap
on the soft green earth and rocked himself to and fro like a child in
trouble. She knew at the first glance that it was he who had uttered
that anguished wail.

To him she turned, as to the only being she could trust in that strange
scene.

"Peter," she said, "what has happened? What is wrong? Where--where is
the captain _sahib_?"

He gave a great start at the sound of her voice above him, and
instantly, with a rapid noiseless movement, arose and bent himself
before her.

"The _mem-sahib_ will pardon her servant," he said, and she saw that his
dark face was twisted with emotion. "But there is bad news for her
to-day. The captain _sahib_ has gone."

"Gone!" Stella echoed the word uncomprehendingly, as one who speaks an
unknown language.

Peter's look fell before the wide questioning of hers. He replied almost
under his breath: "_Mem-sahib_, it was in the still hour of the night.
The captain _sahib_ slept on the mountain, and in his sleep he fell--and
was taken away by the stream."

"Taken away!" Again, numbly, Stella repeated his words. She felt
suddenly very weak and sick.

Peter stretched a hand towards the inscrutable stranger. "This man,
_mem-sahib_," he said with reverence, "he is a holy man, and while
praying upon the mountain top, he saw the _sahib_, sunk in a deep sleep,
fall forward over the rock as if a hand had touched him. He came down