Rose woke to a sense of excitement which pierced her sleep.  
"Tell him they're right down here in front of us," she heard Dore's voice in a hard whisper. "And take that doolie back," he added angrily.
 
The doolie spun round, but before it was gone a hundred yards Rose stopped the bearers.
 
The morning was gray, cold, and very still, just after dawn. A white wet mist had come down upon the hills, and hung from cliff to cliff like a ceiling cloth across the valley. Ahead, laid out behind boulders of blue grey stone, she could see the yellowish attenuated line of Dore's Sikhs spread like a fan on either side of the road.
 
A runner, naked but for his loin-cloth, and throwing up the dust from the soles of his feet, went by towards the front, coming back somewhat less hurriedly ten minutes later.
 
There was no further sound nor sign of life for half an hour, and then Terrington with an orderly came in view round the bend of the road riding slowly. He stopped with a smile of wonder where Rose was sitting on a stone before her doolie at the side of the road.
 
"However did you get here?" he asked.
 
"Mr. Dore sent me back," she pouted.
 
"Sent you back!" he echoed. "I should think he did."
 
She came up to his horse's shoulder, and with a "Good morning," offered him her hand.
 
"Is it going to be a fight?" she asked as he took it.
 
"It is," he answered, "and you're in front of the firing line. You must wait here till I return to you."
 
She stood back demurely with her hands behind her, and he rode on with some injunction to her sentry which she did not understand.
 
He was met, she saw, by Dore near the line of skirmishers, and in obedience to some command the section on either side of the road turned outwards and began to creep up the steep sides of the valley, taking cover, when they halted, so effectively that not a man was to be seen.
 
Just as the last of them had disappeared a rifle rang out, faintly, far ahead.
 
Rose, who had not taken her eyes from Terrington, stiffened at the sound, and stood tensely listening with an ear towards it.
 
She had to wait a full five minutes till the shot was repeated, but hard upon that followed the soft rattle of a fusillade. Though it sounded vague and dull as the patter of rain on water, she knew it at once for what it was, and started forward eagerly towards it along the road.
 
The sentry, mindful of Terrington's injunction, tried to stop her, but she ordered him to stand aside with such imperious authority that he gave way, and Rose went on towards the spot where Terrington was posted above the road with his glasses raised. He was so absorbed in the scene they gave him that he did not hear Mrs. Chantry's approach, and was only aware of her presence beside him when he turned to search for the Sikhs upon the hill.
 
He lowered his glasses sharply and faced her with a frown.
 
"I told you to wait for me," he said reprovingly.
 
"I know," she murmured, "but I couldn't. I'm no good at waiting." Then, as this information brought no softening to his eyes, she added defiantly: "I don't see why you should treat me as a child. I don't intend to be kept out of danger."
 
"There's no danger here to keep you out of," said Terrington, "except the danger of your being seen." His eyes took in her troubled face and his manner changed suddenly to a reasoning gentleness. "You see the fight's right away over there, beyond the Gul. Mir Khan's pushing Walcot back on Rashát, and we hope he thinks he's got us all. We're hiding here, in case he sends any one to look for us along the road to Sar, and the game would be up if he spotted us."
 
He helped her up on to a stone which gave her a view over the low ridge in front of them, and handed her his glasses. Then, as she did not know how to use them, he turned her round to him, and fitted them to her eyes, and standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders, shifted the lens till they suited her sight.
 
The mists had lifted, and she could see without assistance the entrance to the double-headed valley where the gorge which brought the road from Bewal joined that from Sar. Beyond their junction was the famous Gul, showing as a dark cleft across the valley, and, again beyond that the hills closed in about a defile more forbidding than that through which they had come.
 
Here and there across the throat of it, like tufts of bog cotton, burst little white puffs of smoke, where Walcot's men were holding back Mir Khan's reconnaissance. The force they covered was so well concealed that even the glass revealed no sign of it, but the Khan's advance could be traced in specks and streaks of whitish yellow climbing out of the Gul, which Walcot had made but a feint of defending, and creeping dispersedly towards the puffs of smoke.
 
Down the valley towards Bewal the Khan's main body could be made out. Dark masses of men divided by varying spaces and mingling in the distance with driven flocks and herds. The dull morning glimmer of steel wavered over it like the light upon a spider's web.
 
Near the centre was a body of horsemen tailing out along the road, which made a gay tendril of colour even at that leaden hour, it was the Khan's bodyguard in purple and fawn and gold.
 
As Rose Chantry moved the glasses from end to end of the enemy's column, her certainty of a safe return to India collapsed utterly.
 
She looked round at Terrington, expecting to see the same despair on his face that had seized upon her heart, but he was watching Mir Khan's advance with an unaltered countenance.
 
"Oh, Captain Terrington!" she cried hopelessly, "there are thousands of them: they'll eat us up."
 
He put a hand under each of her elbows and lifted her down from the stone.
 
"Well!" he said smiling, "we're going to play the dickens with their digestion."
 
They walked down to the road where Dore was standing with Terrington's mare.
 
"You need send back word of nothing," said Terrington, "we overlook your position. Keep your men where they are, no matter what force may pass you, and don't fire a shot till you get the signal."
 
This laying of a line of fire across the neck of the defile had been Terrington's last piece of daring, to cover the chance of Mir Khan's detaching a force to search the Sar road strong enough to pen the British troops in the defile and prevent their issuing to fall upon the flank of the men engaging Walcot beyond the Gul.
 
Terrington realized the possibility of such a move on seeing the size of the force which the Khan had so unexpectedly collected, and added at once this risk the more to the many he was taking in order to make the enemy's defeat sufficiently disastrous to deter him for a few hours from pursuit.
 
He nodded a farewell to Dore, lifted Rose into the saddle, and walked back beside her.
 
She leant forward to pat the mare's neck and get a side view of his face.
 
"Are you awfully excited?" she asked shyly.
 
His thoughtful eyes came round to her.
 
"Awfully!" he said, smiling.
 
He signed to the doolie to follow them, and led the way back along the road, which rose slowly for about a mile. There was nowhere any sign of life, and the fight and the scene behind them seemed suddenly to have passed out of being.
 
They went a little way in silence, and then Rose Chantry said gravely:
 
"Captain Terrington, do you really think we shall beat them?"
 
He put a hand on the saddle behind her.
 
"Are you afraid, child?" he asked.
 
She nodded pensively.
 
"I can't help it," she broke out with a sort of petulance; "I do so love being alive: and I've had so little of it; only just the last few years."
 
He looked up into her face, with its gay air of beauty softened and sobered by the thought of death.
 
"Yes," he said, "I understand."
 
She searched his expression doubtfully.
 
"Only for me?" she questioned.
 
"Oh, I'm not a lovely woman," he smiled.
 
"Who told you that I was?" she asked him.
 
"Ah! I've found it out for myself," he sighed.
 
"Have you?" she said without conviction. "And aren't you afraid to die?"
 
"A man has to be afraid of other things more," he told her quietly.
 
A sharp turn of the road brought them suddenly into the Dogra's camp. Though no fires were burning the men were round then cooking-pots finishing a meal; food and sleep in Terrington's conception going half way always towards winning a fight.
 
He lifted Rose out of the saddle, asked her if she were equal to a climb, and together they clambered up the ridge of shale on the north of the valley at the head of which Hussain Shah had his post of observation.
 
The track was steep and the stones slippery, so that for most of the way Rose's hand was in his, and when they came to a spot where the shale slope was half afloat in water he stooped, with the remark that he must carry her, and lifted her on his arm; setting her feet down, an instant later, upon a rock, in order to seat her for greater ease upon his shoulder.
 
She sat erect, with one hand under his chin, rejoicing in the air of mastery that never thought to ask her leave, and in his strength which was more severely tried than she suspected by the shifting stone and slush.
 
Hussain's post overlooked the ridge where Dore was lying, and commanded a view of the valley towards Bewal; but the eastern trend of the road hid Walcot's doings beyond the Gul.
 
Hussain at once began an elaborate explanation in Pukhtu, Terrington nodding his head and following the indications of the other's hands, but Rose could not tell by any outward sign how the recital affected him. He turned to her when it ended, and told her they were going higher for a wider view. She pleaded to go with him, but he merely shook his head, smiling at the chaos of rocks above them, over which a goat only could go in safety.
 
Rose sat herself down in a corner of the sangar opposite the three signallers, and watched Terrington and Hussain haul themselves up the scarp, taking cover as warily as though they were stalking sambur, yet never hesitating nor halting for an instant, the Risaldar a length in front, and Terrington swinging hand and foot after him in absolute accord.
 
They disappeared behind a buttress, and Rose fell to watching the signallers, two bronzed and splendid sepoys and a havildar of the Guides, whose blue and white flag slapped ceaselessly in the air.
 
Far away upon a spur above the road by which they had come she could make out the flutter of an answering signal, and, while she tried to follow it, suddenly a star of light winked like a sunlit window on the hill-side far down the defile.
 
It stirred the little group like the fall of a shell. The havildar thrust his paper and pencil on the unoccupied sepoy, hoisted the heliograph over his shoulder, and scrambled out of the sangar with his head turning as he went for a glimpse of the unexpected sun. He had his tripod settled, and an answering shaft of light was flying from his mirror down the valley before the flag had ceased its flapping behind him, but not before the nearer station had also found the sunlight and set a second star in the gray sameness of the hills. The flag fell, the click of the mirror took up the speech of its shaken folds, and dazzling lances of sunlight flung from ten miles away began tilting with the lashes of Rose Chantry's eyes. She was so absorbed by the strangeness of their silent language, that she was startled to find that Terrington had dropped alone and unnoticed from the rocks above her, and was scribbling a message which he handed as he finished it to the havildar.
 
He stood watching intently the answering flashes, twice prompting the reader when he was at fault. Rose, conscious of a certain still determination which had come into his manner, went over and stood beside him.
 
"Has anything happened?" she asked, as the answer to his order sparkled in the air.
 
He wrote a second message before replying; then he put his hand in her arm and walked her back to the sangar.
 
"Yes," he said; "Mir Khan is proving himself to be a good soldier. He's going to take no risks."
 
"Are you taking any?" she asked.
 
"Oh, yes!" he smiled; "I'm taking them all. That's the worst of being the weaker side."
 
He stopped, and looked out again over the Bewal valley, where the enemy's forces could be seen dividing in the form of a Y, one arm leading towards the Sorágh Gul and the other towards the entrance of the Sar defile, where Dore was lying.
 
"He's coming this way?" she suggested.
 
"Yes," he assented, "he's coming this way—half of him. He's either found out our little game, or he's going to make sure we're not playing it. So we've got to fight him here."
 
"Is that worse for us?" she enquired anxiously.
 
He nodded.
 
"And who's over there?" she asked, with a tilt of her head towards the distant hills.
 
"Subadar Afzul Singh and the Guides," he said; "but thanks to Mir Khan, they can move up now, which is a point to us. And now we must go down to lunch."
 
It was all so evidently the playing of a game to him, though the stakes were life and death, that she was infected for the moment by his incentive to the forgetfulness of her own fears, and asked eagerly of Afzul's march as they went down the hill together.
 
Terrington expected the Guides in three hours, and though he had no fear of being unable to hold out until they joined him, it was a question if he could delay his counter attack so long without rendering Dore's position too precarious. Everything would depend on the pace at which the enemy advanced and the force employed for his first attack.
 
When they came again to the water, Terrington knelt down without a word, and Rose seated herself with a laugh upon his shoulder.
 
But he did not set her down when the wet space was crossed, but carried her on to the little green tent which Gholam had pitched above the road, laughing to her protests that it was one of the disadvantages of being so light that people would insist on carrying her.
 
The signal which had dropped from the ridge had set all the camp in motion.
 
Men were building sangars; boxes of ammunition were being unloaded from mules and carried up the hill; all signs of a camp had disappeared and the transport was slowly toiling back by the way it had come.
 
Rose declared herself to be too excited to eat, but Terrington insisted on her finishing what he thought sufficient, and set her an example in appetite in spite of numerous interruptions.
 
No one could say, he reminded her, where nor of what their next meal might be.
 
Then he found her a place from which she could see, as she insisted, the progress of the fight in the greatest safety, posted her doolie with its bearers behind, and left the faithful Gholam in charge of her.
 
"I mayn't see you again," he said, taking her hand, "but word will be sent to him, and you must do as he tells you, as we may have to make a dash to get over to the Gul."............