inexorably, the sounds retreated toward the hills; and as
they drew farther away she listened the more intently. It was as if
her spirit, freed from her body, followed the men she loved, till the
unheeding night absorbed them--till hearing, stretched to its utmost
limit, could catch no lightest echo of sound.

Then silence, intensified by stifling darkness, enveloped her,
pressing in upon heart and brain like an invisible force that held her
prisoner against her will.

The practical side of her fought squarely against this obsession of
the intangible; but it persisted and prevailed. The mocking shadows
crowded about her, compelled her to a discomfortable realisation of
her solitude in a station needing the perpetual alertness of armed men
to ensure peace and safety. For Kohat city boasted a creditable
average of bad characters and murder cases--a corpse more or less on
the Border being of no more consequence than the fall of a sparrow;
and the Waziris had of late been unusually daring in regard to
Government horses and carbines. Nor was it an unknown thing for them
to creep past the sentries on very black nights into the station
itself; and for all her courage, Frank Olliver was by no means
fearless. The two are a contradiction in terms. Only the unimaginative
are fearless, and only the keenly imaginative, capable of feeling fear
in every fibre, ever scale the heights of true courage.

Save for the wakeful vigilance of sentries, the huddled bungalows of
the cantonment lay below her empty as a handful of shells on a lone
shore; and in the overpowering stillness each least sound stood out
crisp and clear-cut as twigs against a winter sunset; the fitful
rustle of bedclothes; Rob breathing peacefully in a distant corner;
the whisper of the punkah; the querulous creaking of the rope answered
by a whine from the back verandah, where a resigned coolie swayed a
basket of damp straw, packed with bottles of milk and soda-water for
Denvil's consumption during the night.

The reiteration of these still small voices grew distracting as the
whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing
thought, and compelling her to note every change in their pitiless
regularity.

Resolved to break the spell by the only definite action available, she
decided to prepare for the emergency which her brain refused to face.
But on rising she was arrested by a voice from the bed--a voice not of
speech but of song, a snatch from a