s blood
like fire.

"Ah!" he gasped. "It's good! It's good!"

And then he found another fighting beside him--a mighty fighting man,
grim, terrible, silent. They thrust together; they withdrew together;
they charged together.

Once an enemy seized Derrick's sword and he found himself vainly
struggling against the awful, wild-faced fanatic's sinewy grasp. He saw
the man's upraised arm, and knew with horrible certainty that he was
helpless, helpless.

Then there shot out a swift, rescuing hand. A straight and deadly blow
was struck. And Derrick, flinging a laugh over his shoulder, beheld a
man dressed as a tribesman fall headlong over his enemy's body, struck
to the earth by another swordsman.

Like lightning there flashed through his brain the memory of a man who
had saved his life more than a year before on this same tumultuous
Frontier--a man in tribesman's dress, with blue eyes of a strange, keen
friendliness. He had it now. This was the Secret Service man. Derrick
planted himself squarely over the prostrate body, and there stood while
the fight surged on about him to the deadly and inevitable end.

XI

THE SECRET OUT

"All Carlyon's doing!" General Harford said a little later. "He has
pulled the strings throughout, from their very midst. Carlyon the
ubiquitous, Carlyon the silent, Carlyon the watchful! He has averted a
horrible catastrophe. The Indian Government must be made to understand
that he is a servant worth having. They say he personally led the
tribesmen to their death. They certainly walked very willingly into the
trap arranged for them. Now, where is Carlyon?"

No one knew. In the plain outside the camp wounded men were being
collected. The General was relieved to hear that Carlyon was not among
them. He sat down to make his report, a highly eulogistic report, of
this man's splendid services. And then he went to late breakfast at the
club-house.

In the evening Averil rode back to the station with an escort. The
terrible traces of the struggle were not wholly removed. They rode round
by a longer route to avoid the sight.

Seddon was the first of her friends who saw her. He was standing inside
the mess-house. He went hurriedly forward and gave her brief details of
the fight. Then, while they were talking, Derrick himself came running
up. He greeted her with less of his boyish effusion than was customary.

"How is the Secret Service man?" he asked abruptly of Seddon. "Is he
badly dama