hat
inverted tower of darkness the soul of the proud Sultan is falling
forever and ever."

"What a queer chap you are," said Boyle. "You talk as if a fellow
could believe those fables."

"Perhaps I believe the moral and not the fable," answered Fisher.
"But here comes Lady Hastings. You know her, I think."

The clubhouse on the golf links was used, of course, for many other
purposes besides that of golf. It was the only social center of the
garrison beside the strictly military headquarters; it had a
billiard room and a bar, and even an excellent reference library for
those officers who were so perverse as to take their profession
seriously. Among these was the great general himself, whose head of
silver and face of bronze, like that of a brazen eagle, were often
to be found bent over the charts and folios of the library. The
great Lord Hastings believed in science and study, as in other
severe ideals of life, and had given much paternal advice on the
point to young Boyle, whose appearances in that place of research
were rather more intermittent. It was from one of these snatches of
study that the young man had just come out through the glass doors
of the library on to the golf links. But, above all, the club was so
appointed as to serve the social conveniences of ladies at least as
much as gentlemen, and Lady Hastings was able to play the queen in
such a society almost as much as in her own ballroom. She was
eminently calculated and, as some said, eminently inclined to play
such a part. She was much younger than her husband, an attractive
and sometimes dangerously attractive lady; and Mr. Horne Fisher
looked after her a little sardonically as she swept away with the
young soldier. Then his rather dreary eye strayed to the green and
prickly growths round the well, growths of that curious cactus
formation in which one thick leaf grows directly out of the other
without stalk or twig. It gave his fanciful mind a sinister feeling
of a blind growth without shape or purpose. A flower or shrub in the
West grows to the blossom which is its crown, and is content. But
this was as if hands could grow out of hands or legs grow out of
legs in a nightmare. "Always adding a province to the Empire," he
said, with a smile, and then added, more sadly, "but I doubt if I
was right, after all!"

A strong but genial voice broke in on his meditations and he looked
up and smiled, seeing the face of an old friend. The voice was,
indeed,