folk, or the contentions of unlovely
creeds and vain philosophies. The elect of his race had ever been the
wanderers. No more than Hellas had his land a paltry local unity.
Wherever the English flag was planted anew, wherever men did their duty
faithfully and without hope of little reward--there was the fatherland
of the true patriot.

The time was passing, and still the world was quiet. The hour must be
close on midnight, and still there was no sign of men. For the first
time he dared to hope for success. Before, an hour's delay was all that
he had sought. To give the north time for a little preparation, to make
defence possible, had been his aim; now with the delay he seemed to see
a chance for victory. Bardur would be alarmed hours ago; men would be
on the watch all over Kashmir and the Punjab; the railways would be
guarded. The invader would find at the least no easy conquest. When
they had trodden his life out in the defile they would find stronger men
to bar their path, and he would not have died in vain. It was a slender
satisfaction for vanity, for what share would he have in the defence?
Unknown, unwept, he would perish utterly, and to others would be the
glory. He did not care, nay, he rejoiced in the brave obscurity. He
had never sought so vulgar a thing as fame. He was going out of life
like a snuffed candle. George, if George survived, would know nothing
of his death. He was miles beyond the frontier, and if George, after
months of war, should make his way to this fatal cleft, what trace would
he find of him? And all his friends, Wratislaw, Arthur Mordaunt, the
folk of Glenavelin--no word would ever come to them to tell them of his
end.

But Alice--and in one wave there returned to him the story which he had
striven to put out of his heart. She had known him in his weakness, but
she would never think of him in his strength. The whimsical fate
pleased him. The last meeting on that grey autumn afternoon at the
Broken Bridge had heartened him for his travellings. It had been a
compact between them; and now he was redeeming the promise of the tryst.
And she would never know it, would only know that somewhere and somehow
he had ceased to struggle with an inborn weakness. Well-a-day! It was
no world of rounded corners and complete achievements. It was enough if
a hint, a striving, a beginning were found in the scheme of man's
frailty. He had no clear-cut conception of a future-that was the happy
lot of the stro