utter a
word of reproach or blame.

"No, don't go, boy!" he said, in a tone that Ronnie never forgot. "We'll
face this thing together. May God help us both!"

And Ronnie, yielding once more, leaned his head in his hands, and burst
into anguished tears.

XVI

THE COMING OF HOPE

How they got through the dragging hours of that awful night neither of
them afterwards quite knew. They spoke very little, and slept not at
all. When morning came at last they were still sitting in silence as if
they watched the dead, linked together as brothers by a bond that was
sacred.

It was soon after sunrise that a message came for Ronnie from the
colonel's bungalow next door to the effect that the commanding-officer
wished to see him. He looked at Baring as he received it.

"I wish you'd come with me," he said.

Baring rose at once. He knew that the boy was depending very largely
upon his support just then. The sunshine seemed to mock them as they
went. It was a day of glorious Indian winter, than which there is
nothing more exquisite on earth, save one of English spring. The colonel
met them on his own veranda. He noted Ronnie's haggard face with a quick
glance of pity.

"I sent for you, my lad," he said, "because I have just heard a piece of
news that I thought I ought to pass on at once."

"News, sir?" Ronnie echoed the word sharply.

"Yes; news of your sister." The colonel gave him a keen look, then went
on in a tone of reassuring kindness that both his listeners found
maddeningly deliberate. "She was not, it seems, in the bungalow at the
time the dam burst. She was out on the hillside, and so--My dear fellow,
for Heaven's sake pull yourself together! Things are better than you
think. She--" He did not finish, for Ronnie suddenly sprang past him
with a loud cry. A girl's figure had appeared in the doorway of the
colonel's drawing-room. Ronnie plunged in, and it was seen no more.

The colonel turned to Baring for sympathy, and found that the latter had
abruptly, almost violently, turned his back. It surprised him
considerably, for he had often declared his conviction that under no
circumstances would this officer of his lose his iron composure.
Baring's behaviour of the night before had seemed to corroborate this;
in fact, he had even privately thought him somewhat cold-blooded.

But his present conduct seemed to indicate that even Baring was human,
notwithstanding his strength; and in his heart the colonel li