every phase of feeling. But, curiously, she took no open notice of the
change in him. She was sublimely happy, and like a child she lived upon
happiness, asking no questions. He never saw her other than content.

Slowly that month of deadly rain wore on. The Plains had become a vast
and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with
fever, leaden with despair.

But Puck was like a singing bird in the heart of the wilderness. She
lived apart in a paradise of her own, and even the colonel had to
relent again and bestow his grim smile upon her.

"Merryon's a lucky devil," he said, and everyone in the mess agreed with
him.

But, "You wait!" said Macfarlane, the doctor, with gloomy emphasis.
"There's more to come."

It was on a night of awful darkness that he uttered this prophecy, and
his hearers were in too overwhelming a state of depression to debate the
matter.

Merryon's bungalow was actually the only one in the station in which
happiness reigned. They were sitting together in his den smoking a great
many cigarettes, listening to the perpetual patter of the rain on the
roof and the drip, drip, drip of it from gutter to veranda, superbly
content and "completely weather-proof," as Puck expressed it.

"I hope none of the boys will turn up to-night," she said. "We haven't
room for more than two, have we?"