ags beyond the tower with the
hordes of white-clad Swatis, all in their finest robes, like men who have
just reached the goal of a holy pilgrimage, as indeed they had. He saw
their standards, he heard the din of their firearms, and high above them
on the wall of the tower he saw the khaki-clad figure of a single Sepoy
calmly flashing across the valley news of the defenders' plight.

"Didn't he get the Victoria Cross?" he asked.

"No," returned the Doctor with a certain awkwardness. But still Shere Ali
did not notice.

"And what was the exception?" he asked eagerly. "What was the other brave
deed you have seen fit to rank with this?"

"That, too, happened over there," said the Doctor, seizing upon the
question with relief. "During the early days of the siege we were able to
send in to the tower water and food. But when the first of August came we
could help them no more. The enemy thronged too closely round us, we were
attacked by night and by day, and stone sangars, in which the Swatis lay
after dark, were built between us and the tower. We sent up water to the
tower for the last time at half-past nine on a Saturday morning, and it
was not until half-past four on the Monday afternoon that the relieving
force marched across the bridge down there and set us free."

"They were without water for all that time--and in August?" cried
Shere Ali.

"No," the Doctor answered. "But they would have been had the Sepoy not
found his equal. A bheestie"--and he nodded his head to emphasise the
word--"not a soldier at all, but a mere water-carrier, a mere
camp-follower, volunteered to go down to the river. He crept out of the
tower after nightfall with his water-skins, crawled down between the
sangars--and I can tell you the hill-side was thick with them--to the
brink of the Swat river below there, filled his skins, and returned
with them."

"That man, too, earned the Victoria Cross," said Shere Ali.

"Yes," said the Doctor, "no doubt, no doubt."

Something of flurry was again audible in his voice, and this time Shere
Ali noticed it.

"Earned--but did not get it?" he went on slowly; and turning to the
Doctor he waited quietly for an answer. The answer was given reluctantly,
after a pause.

"Well! That is so."

"Why?"

The question was uttered sharply, close upon the words which had preceded
it. The Doctor looked upon the ground, shifted his feet, and looked up
again. He was a young man, and inexperienced. The question w