r, when the lanterns rattled, and
all was dark.

Then followed the next orders, and tramp! tramp! tramp! the men marched
away like a relieving guard, Lennox and Dickenson standing fast with
their backs leaning against the rugged wall of rock, perfectly
motionless in the black darkness, and looking outward and down at the
faint light or two visible below in the camp.

As they drew back against the rock Lennox felt for his companion's hand,
which gripped his directly, and so they stood waiting.

To them the silence seemed quite appalling, for they felt as if they
were on the eve of some discovery--what, neither could have said; but
upon comparing notes afterwards each said he felt convinced that
something was about to happen, but paradoxically, at the same time, as
if it never would; and when a quarter of an hour must have passed, the
excitement grew more intense, as the pressure of their hot, wet hands
told, for they felt then that whatever was about to happen must befall
them then, if they were not interrupted by the return of their officers.

Each tried to telegraph to his companion the intensity of feeling from
which he suffered, and after a fashion one did communicate to the other
something of his sensations.

But nothing came to break the intense silence, and they stood with
strained ears, now gazing up at the glittering stars, and now down
through the darkness at the two feeble lights that they felt must be
those outside the colonel's quarters in the market-square.

"I don't know how it was," said Lennox afterwards, "but just at the last
I began somehow to think of being at the back of the colonel's hut that
night just after Sergeant James had put out the light upon discovering
the train."

"I felt that if the business went on much longer, something--some of my
strings that were all on the strain--would crack," interrupted
Dickenson.

"Yes," said Lennox; "I felt so too."

And this was how he was feeling--strained--till something seemed to be
urging him to cry out or move in the midst of that intense period, when
all at once he turned cold all down the back, for a long-drawn, dismal,
howling wail rose in the distance, making him shudder just as he had
seen the sentry quiver in his horror and dread.

"Bah! Hyena," he said to himself the next moment; and then a thrill ran
through him as he felt Dickenson's grip increase suddenly with quite a
painful pressure.

He responded to it directly, every nerve in