hold, encroached upon now by the stealthy rustle of approaching garments and the pit-a-pat of unshod feet: the chicks were separated by brown fingers, but Justin gave no heed to anything but the supine figure upon the charpoy moving uneasily beneath his eye.

"Go now in the devil's name! I have failed again. I always do fail where you come in; always have. Now go. Isn't it enough to have scored the last trick of the rubber? 'Tisn't like you, Justin, to stand there watching me wriggle like a broken-backed snake. Be off, I say; tell any tale ye like to the Fort; say I was drunk, or had taken drugs (ye saw me take the stuff); tell 'em I am mad, if ye like: only go! Ye were a fool to come here to tempt me; 'twas all I wanted ye for."

"But not all I want of you. Come, Travis, ye'll admit ye owe me something. I had hoped when your message came-had fancied-'fore Heaven, man, I find it hard to refer to her in your presence. She is with God. What of the children?"

"Yours?" whispered the other with the spite of a chained fiend.

Justin's mouth tightened for an instant, but as soon relaxed. "That stab comes twenty years too late. You can't hurt me, man, nor her any more. Ye know that I know; and I know that you know; why keep up the pretence?"

"Jealousy, my infernal jealousy," whined the other.

"There were children when ye sent her home, a boy and a baby girl. They'll be grown-up by this, though 'tis hard to believe it. What have ye done what are ye doing for them? Come, there is yet time; take the righthand turn at this last, and permit me to help ye."

"You?" Those rugged black brows lifted in sheer amazement; the ques

"But 'tis just what I do mean. I ask ye to believe that it shall be my duty, my pleasure, my privilege to seek them out; yes, I'll say it-as their poor dead mother's early friend, Travis to assist them, if they need it. And if you, even now, Travis, would use me as your servant-in this particular, mind, in this particular. Think man, otherwise I come to them unavouched, a stranger; but a line from you, some personal trinket, a signet with your crest for the lad; your sword; money if you are able-they may be in want."

The men's eyes met in a long look; the Major's overcame. He knew that he had scored again.

"Pon my life, Justin, ye are the most wonderful fellow in India; I rob ye of "

"Say no more, Travis, I beg!" cried the conqueror, with low vehemence, his lips a-tremble.

"But I will say it. Have not I led ye the devil of a life; aye, for twenty years; kept ye back in the service; injured your name?"

"No, Travis, not that."

"But I did my worst. Jealousy, sheer jealousy! Yes, and inveigled ye to this room and sent a bullet pointblank at your head. (And he stands there and asks me to appoint him trustee for the children. My God!)"

"And you will do it."

"Gad, then, I suppose I must," whimpering weakly. "Give-Gi-" the capacity for connected speech was ebbing from him, the dim eye roved, the hand went exploring in the direction of that fatal box.

"What, again?" protested Justin, dreading a second resort to opium; but

Justin, wary as ever, drew the stopper and sniffed; the peculiar aroma of aniseed reassured him: it was native-made rack. Travis gulped the spirit, smacked his lips feebly, and was presently as much of a man again as he ever would be.

"See here, Justin, ye must know, for 'tis servants' gup, that I'm a squeezed lime. That prize money? the mohurs? Gone! This woman keeps me, not I her: the land, this bungalow, and all that's on it, are hers; or, well, his who can first get in and keep in when I'm gone, as I shall be presently."

"Man, where's your nest-egg?" asked Justin bluntly, who had listened to this sort of thing from dying lips before in his time, and judged by the penitent's shifty eye that it was with him as with others: there would be at the Ca Sao Thomé some secret hoard well hidden from dusky housemates, but available for momentary use at a pinch.

66

"(Must I trust this fellow?)" Travis muttered into his beard. (It seems so.) D'ye see that brace of pistols on the wall there?" He caught his breath with an eye on the hanging chick in the doorway. "They should be cased, of course, but I like 'em better so; they've hung there this many years; handy, ye understand. Native servants all thieves. Well," a long pause, “ye may take 'em to the children from their father."

Justin glanced across the room. The

weapons were holster arms of the ordinary service pattern of the day; he lifted them from their hooks and weighed them in hand in turn, watched furtively by the other from under drooping lids, his purpose already wavering.

"For her children, one apiece, as they are, mind, as they are," the invalid gasped breathlessly, pinning himself to a purpose he feared to fall back from, and already to all appearances far down the hill there is no reclimbing, but in reality simulating greater weakness than he felt.

"These," said Justin with meaning, "are loaded. I am in a borrowed saddle this afternoon, a civilian's saddle, without holsters. Will ye send these to my "

"I will not, sir. Have I not this moment committed them to your owu hand? What the devil-?"

The Major laid the weapons upon the foot of the charpoy. "Ye must trust me, Travis. What are the charges?"

The sick man agonized dumbly for a minute. It was the bringing to the birth of the most shameful secret of a shameful life.

"Gems," said he evasively; "just gems, nothing more."

"Not the lost loot-the Bexwara loot?" said Justin just above a whisper, and tingling, for this touched his own honor, and the honor of his regiment. The question jumped from him, the final result of long, unconscious brain-work upon his part, and when it fell from his lips was as great a surprise to himself as to the man whom he questioned. He would have called it an inspiration.

"Confound ye! No! Certainly not! How dare ye insult me!" replied Travis, making some futile effort to assert himself; but under the dreadful, unwincing scrutiny of the eyes of the man upon whom he had years before

vainly sought to fasten the stigma of his own theft, his nerve finally failed. Some heart trouble made him clutch his breast and gasp feebly for relief. He believed himself in the article of death; the whole inner structure of deceit broke up with him; necessity to confess to some one was the one overpowering sensation. The pang passed; he lay white and collapsed; his eyes opened and met Justin's with a new expression. "Gad, I'm too far gone to keep it up any longer. Some of the stuff might be; and then again it isn't. Yes, then, yes!" heaving his secret off his bosom. "Have it your own way if it pleases ye to clear yourself at the expense of a dying brother officer!" "Travis!"

"O, you'll be a rich man now, worth a plum. 'Tis all yours; there isn't a man in the present officers' mess, nor a sergeant, nor a private who was in that affair, only you and I. Take the beastly things and keep them if ye will, but keep your mouth shut until I'm gone."

"Travis, how could ye? No, I'm not thinking of myself. I was able, praise God, to clear myself. That charge never stuck as some of yours did (none permanently though, all forgotten). But this wasn't like you; think, the regiment—"

"Don't look like that! Take your eyes off me, sir, I tell ye! Our fellows? They took their chances, I took mine. They are dead and gone, every man jack of them. (Oh, I give ye my word I've kept count.) The affair lies between our two selves. Besides, these are not merely the N'wab's State housings; it is less simple. Some of the stones I came by fairly, some of the others I passed one at a time when on leave in Calcutta. I made a mixedup matter of it from policy. I swear I could not separate the things now myself, nor could any man living. Ye must take to the business as it stands:

keep the stuff or hand it over to the brats."

Justin paced the length of the room softly, his hands behind his back, considering his position and duty in the light of this amazing revelation. The pistols lay where he had placed them. The wretch upon the charpoy muttered on and on. "The grandest jewels, Rutnapura gems, Mysore carbuncles, and some pigeon-blood Burmese, the finest of all. There's more than one six-carat stone among them, but I've never dared offer them to a sowkar by way of raising money on them: too many of 'em are named stones, known by repute, at any rate, to every goldsmith's bazaar in Southern India. Paris the only market for 'em; and how was I to get away without ready money? .. up to my eyes in debt since I was a subaltern. I swear I've applied for long leave a dozen times, or thought about it; but some damned thing came between every time. See now, over a year ago I thought all my plans were laid: but just in the very nick that infernal kite Rumbold swoops upon the French factories; no Paris for me! Then my heart gave out, and here you have me.

"The Colonel shouldn't have shown 'em to us-you and me, you remember, none else. The sight of that big ruby, the 'Heart of Rama' the natives call it ('tis there somewhere; I've not dared to look at it for years past)—the very glow of the thing, I say, was enough to turn the head of an archbishop. But it didn't turn mine, at first, that is. 'Put them under guard, sir,' I said (ye remember), but the fool must needs keep them in his quarters over-night, the N'wab's house, a ramshackle native palace. The best guard for stuff like this,' says he, 'is to let no one know ye have it.'

"Poor Challoner! dead on his bed next morning, a frightful object, a pitch-plaster over his mouth and a

knife-wound in his heart; and the loot gone. Not a soul of us had heard a sound, not a sentry had seen any one pass the lines. You remember how we turned the place upside-down, but found nothing."

loot, ye'll say. But were they? That is exactly the point. There ye have it. The regiment had lost something, I own; and I had found something, I'll admit. Mind ye, 'twas impossible to identify; the thief had broken every

"I'm coming to it. Ye shall know everything; and when ye do ye shall judge whether I, or the man ye are to dine with to-night, comes out best; there's no blood between my fingers; I never harmed any man but yourself. Loot? What is loot? I'll take my oath that the stuff in those barrels was come by more cleanly than Pigot's big diamond that he bragged so about, or those mortgages that cost him his life. Listen now. (The loot was gone, absolutely gone. Ye admit so much?) I had taken my turn at rounds that night. A white full moon it was, an impossible time for surprise or robbery: it made us all careless. One could see a jackal cross the road at a hundred paces; the brute's coat might not show, but his shadow did, skating on the white as black as ink. It struck me that our horse-lines were restless. The beasts had had a hard day of it and should have been quiet, yet here one and there another blew, half arose, and lay down again. Then one near the well got to his feet with a plunge and snorted; I heard him lash out, his shoe shone in the moon like silver, and the blow sounded dull, as if it had got home. There's something wrong, thought I, and went to see. There, close to the brute's heels lay a man, flat upon his face, as he had been caught by the hoof whilst wriggling down the line upon his belly in the shadow cast by the horses. He was stone dead, his temple driven in, stark naked, greased all over, a professional thief, as I took it, a bichri between his teeth, and close by his hand a little tight bundle-these. The Bexwara

'Twas a parcel no bigger than a gooseegg, just loose stones; and whose? Tell me that! That was precisely the question. You might have answered it in one way, I answered it in another. I took that dead nigger by his top-knot, dragged him two steps to the well-side, and dropped him in. The stones were mine, and they are mine. Give them to me. I've changed my mind, I tell ye."

The miserable wretch had slipped back to his normal self: half arising, he made a feeble snatch at the pistols where they lay at his feet; but another spasm seized him, he fell back gasping; the attack passed, he lay panting.

Justin, without replying, was trying pens; the other, regaining self-control, nodded.

"Ye play for safety. I don't blame ye. An authority is what you want; word it your own way, but make it irrevocable, for there's a devil on the watch behind that chick, and there'll be seven at my elbow directly. ('Pon my soul, I doubt it he wins clear of the bungalow as it is; he won't if they have an inkling of what he carries.) Be quick with it, man, and make sure work, for the yellow Jezebel that owns me will twist the whole story out of me to-night, and I shall find myself denying everything I've told ye, petitioning the Governor, memorializing the Honorable Court by the next mail; so make it a tight deed of gift, and be quick, man, quick, for I'm sinking."

Justin did not reply; his pen moved sedately; the result lay boldly legible, free from blot or interlineation. He read: "I, Maurice Fane Travis, late