comfortably in his chair. It should be
mentioned, perhaps, that he not only doctored and operated on the sick
and wounded, but he kept the stores, and when any fighting was to be
done, took a rifle and filled any place which might be vacant in the
firing-line.

"There are now forty-four cigarettes," he reflected. "At six a day they
will last a week. In a week something will have happened. Either the
relieving force will be here, or--yes, decidedly something will have
happened." And as he blew the smoke out from between his lips he added
solemnly: "If not to us, to the Political Officer."

Meanwhile Luffe paced the roof of the fort in the darkness. The fort was
built in the bend of a swift, wide river, and so far as three sides were
concerned was securely placed. For on three the low precipitous cliffs
overhung the tumbling water. On the fourth, however, the fertile plain of
the valley stretched open and flat up to the very gates.

In front of the forts a line of sangars extended, the position of each
being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from
the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. And from
one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a tom-tom came to
Luffe's ears.

Luffe walked up and down for a time upon the roof. There was a new sangar
to-night, close to the North Tower, which had not existed yesterday.
Moreover, the almond trees in the garden just outside the western wall
were in blossom, and the leaves upon the branches were as a screen, where
only the bare trunks showed a fortnight ago.

But with these matters Luffe was not at this moment concerned. They
helped the enemy, they made the defence more arduous, but they were
trivial in his thoughts. Indeed, the siege itself was to him an
unimportant thing. Even if the fortress fell, even if every man within
perished by the sword--why, as Lynes had said, the Sirkar does not forget
its servants. The relieving force might march in too late, but it would
march in. Men would die, a few families in England would wear mourning,
the Government would lose a handful of faithful servants. England would
thrill with pride and anger, and the rebellion would end as rebellions
always ended.

Luffe was troubled for quite another cause. He went down from the roof,
walked by courtyard and winding passage to the quarters of the Khan. A
white-robed servant waited for him at the bottom of a broad staircase in
a room gi