She went on with gathering speed. At the head of the veranda-steps she
dimly discerned a figure waiting for her, a figure clothed in some
white, muffling garment that seemed to cover the face. And yet she knew
by all her bounding pulses whom she had found.

"Colonel Carlyon!" she said, and on the impulse of the moment she gave
him both her hands.

His quiet voice answered her out of the strange folds. "Come into the
garden a moment!" he said.

She went with him unquestioning, with the confidence of a child. He led
her with silent, stealthy tread into the deepest gloom the compound
afforded. Then he stopped and faced her with a question that sent a
sudden tumult of doubt racing through her brain.

"Will you take a message to Fort Akbar for me, Averil?" he said. "A
matter of life and death."

A message! Averil's heart stood suddenly-still. All the evil report that
she had heard of this man raised its head like a serpent roused from
slumber, a serpent that had hidden in her breast, and a terrible agony
of fear took the place of her confidence.

Carlyon waited for her answer without a sign of impatience. Through her
mind, as it were on wheels of fire, Steele's passionate words were
running: "He lives on treachery. He would betray any one or all of us to
death if it were to the interest of the Empire that we should be
sacrificed." And again: "I would sooner tread barefoot on a scorpion
than get entangled in Carlyon's web."

All this she would once have dismissed as vilest calumny. But Carlyon's
abandonment of Derrick, and his subsequent explanation thereof, were
terribly overwhelming evidence against him. And now this man, this spy,
wanted to use her as an instrument to accomplish some secret end of his.

A matter of life or death, he said. And for which of these did he
purpose to use her efforts? Averil sickened at the possibilities the
question raised in her mind. And still Carlyon waited for her answer.

"Why do you ask me?" she said at last, in a quivering whisper. "What is
the message you want to send?"

"You delivered a message for me only yesterday without a single
question," he said.

She wrung her hands together in the darkness. "I know. I know," she
said; "but then I did not realize."

"You saved the camp from destruction," he went on. "Will you not do the
same to-night?"

"How shall I know?" she sobbed in anguish.

"What have they been telling you?"

The quiet voice came in strange contrast t