while his guests talked. The party was in no way different to many
others, and it would have ended and been forgotten by all concerned if
it had not been for the fact that an unusual occurrence broke it up in
dismay. Mrs. Wilder complained of the heat during dinner, and she had
been pale, looking doubly so in her vivid green dress; her usual
animation had vanished, and she talked with evident effort and seemed
glad of the darkness of the veranda.

Suddenly one of those strange silences fell over everyone, silences that
may be of a few seconds' duration, but that appear like hours. What they
are connected with, no one can guess. The silence lasted for a second,
and it was broken with sudden violence.

"My God," said the voice of Hartley, the Head of the Police, speaking in
tones of alarm. "Mrs. Wilder has fainted!" She had fallen forward in her
chair, and he had caught her as she fell.

Very soon the guests dispersed and the bungalow was still for the night.
One or two waited to hear what the doctor had to say, and went away
satisfied in the knowledge that the heat had been too much for Mrs.
Wilder, and, but for that event, the dinner-party would have been
forgotten after two days. Hartley was the last to leave, and the sound
of trotting hoofs grew faint along the road.

By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can be
presumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are few
who keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds to
their work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds and
tried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heath
lived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in was