has India been doing to
him?"

With a faint gesture she motioned him nearer still. Her face was very
pale, but resolution was shining in her eyes. "Don't let us be
disturbed!" she whispered. "And I--I will tell you--all I know."

CHAPTER IV

THE SERPENT IN THE DESERT

The battalion was ordered back to Kurrumpore for the winter months,
ostensibly to go into a camp of exercise, though whispers of some deeper
motive for the move were occasionally heard. Markestan, though outwardly
calm and well-behaved, was not regarded with any great confidence by the
Government, so it was said, though, officially, no one had the smallest
suspicion of danger.

It was with mixed feelings that Stella returned at length to The Green
Bungalow, nearly three months after her baby's birth. During that time
she had seen a good deal of her brother-in-law, who, nothing daunted by
the discomforts of the journey, went to and fro several times between
Bhulwana and the Plains. They had become close friends, and Stella had
grown to regard his presence as a safeguard and protection against the
nameless evils that surrounded Everard, though she could not have said
wherefore.

He it was who, with Peter's help, prepared the bungalow for her coming.
It had been standing empty all through the hot weather and the rains.
The compound was a mass of overgrown verdure, and the bungalow itself
was in some places thick with fungus.

When Stella came to it, however, all the most noticeable traces of
neglect had been removed. The place was scrubbed clean. The ragged roses
had been trained along the verandah-trellis, and fresh Indian matting
had been laid down everywhere.

The garden was still a wilderness, but Bernard declared that he would
have it in order before many weeks had passed. It was curious how, with
his very limited knowledge of natives and their ways, he managed to
extract the most willing labour from them. Peter the Great smiled with
gratified pride whenever he gave him an order, and all the other
servants seemed to entertain a similar veneration for the big, blue-eyed
_sahib_ who was never heard to speak in anger or impatience, and yet
whose word was one which somehow no one found it possible to disregard.

Tommy had become fond of him also. He was wont to say that Bernard was
the most likable fellow he had ever met. An indefinable barrier had
grown up between him and his brother-in-law, which, desperately though
he had striven agai