language.

Peter's look fell before the wide questioning of hers. He replied almost under his breath: "Mem-sahib, it was in the still hour of the night. The captain sahib slept on the mountain, and in his sleep he fell—and was taken away by the stream."

"Taken away!" Again, numbly, Stella repeated his words. She felt suddenly very weak and sick.

Peter stretched a hand towards the inscrutable stranger. "This man, mem-sahib," he said with reverence, "he is a holy man, and while praying upon the mountain top, he saw the sahib, sunk in a deep sleep, fall forward over the rock as if a hand had touched him. He came down and searched for him, mem-sahib; but he was gone. The snows are melting, and the water runs swift and deep."

"Ah!" It was a gasp rather than an exclamation. Stella was blindly tottering against the tent-rope, clutching vaguely for support.

The great Sikh caught her ere she fell, his own distress subdued in a flash before the urgency of her need. "Lean on me, mem-sahib!" he said, deference and devotion mingling in his voice.

She accepted his help instinctively, scarcely knowing what she did, and very gently, with a woman's tenderness, he led her back into the tent.

"My mem-sahib must rest," he said. "And I will find a woman to serve her."

She opened her eyes with a dizzy sense of wonder. Peter had never failed before to procure anything that she wanted, but even in her extremity she had a curiously irrelevant moment of conjecture as to where he would turn in the wilderness for the commodity he so confidently mentioned.

Then, the anguish returning, she checked his motion to depart. "No, no, Peter," she said, commanding her voice with difficulty. "There is no need for that. I am quite all right. But—but—tell me more! How did this happen? Why did he sleep on the mountain?"

"How should the mem-sahib's servant know?" questioned Peter, gently and deferentially, as one who reasoned with a child. "It may be that the opium of his cigar was stronger than usual. But how can I tell?"

"Opium! He never smoked opium!" Stella gazed upon him in fresh bewilderment. "Surely—surely not!" she said, as though seeking to convince herself.

"Mem-sahib, how should I know?" the Indian murmured soothingly.

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