ou walk past 'em. Gad, they'd tear me to
pieces, if they dared, some of 'em!" and he laughed grimly, as though
the hate he inspired was a thing to be proud of.

"How shall we go?" asked Vickers. "Have you got any instructions?"

"No," says Frere; "it's all left to you. Get 'em up the best way you
can, Arthur said, and pack 'em off to the new peninsula. He thinks you
too far off here, by George! He wants to have you within hail."

"It's dangerous taking so many at once," suggested Vickers.

"Not a bit. Batten 'em down and keep the sentries awake, and they won't
do any harm."

"But Mrs. Vickers and the child?"

"I've thought of that. You take the Ladybird with the prisoners, and
leave me to bring up Mrs. Vickers in the Osprey."

"We might do that. Indeed, it's the best way, I think. I don't like the
notion of having Sylvia among those wretches, and yet I don't like to
leave her."

"Well," says Frere, confident of his own ability to accomplish anything
he might undertake, "I'll take the Ladybird, and you the Osprey. Bring
up Mrs. Vickers yourself."

"No, no," said Vickers, with a touch of his old pomposity, "that won't
do. By the King's Regulations--"

"All right," interjected Frere, "you needn't quote 'em. 'The officer
commanding is obliged to place himself in charge'--all right, my dear
sir. I've no objection in life."

"It was Sylvia that I was thinking of," said Vickers.

"Well, then," cries the other, as the door of the room inside opened,
and a little white figure came through into the broad verandah. "Here
she is! Ask her yourself. Well, Miss Sylvia, will you come and shake
hands with an old friend?"

The bright-haired baby of the Malabar had become a bright-haired child
of some eleven years old, and as she stood in her simple white dress in
the glow of the lamplight, even the unaesthetic mind of Mr. Frere was
struck by her extreme beauty. Her bright blue eyes were as bright and as
blue as ever. Her little figure was as upright and as supple as a willow
rod; and her innocent, delicate face was framed in a nimbus of that fine
golden hair--dry and electrical, each separate thread shining with a
lustre of its own--with which the dreaming painters of the middle ages
endowed and glorified their angels.

"Come and give me a kiss, Miss Sylvia!" cries Frere. "You haven't
forgotten me, have you?"

But the child, resting one hand on her father's knee, surveyed Mr. Frere
from head to foot with the charming i