hospital?" questioned Merryon.

"No. To tell you the truth, Robey is pegging out, poor fellow. It's
always the best chaps that go first, though. Heaven knows, we may be all
gone before this time to-morrow."

"Don't talk like a fool!" said Merryon, curtly.

And Harley said no more.

They pressed on through mud that was ankle-deep to the barracks.

There during all the nightmare hours that followed Merryon worked with
the strength of ten. He gave no voluntary thought to his wife waiting
for him in loneliness, but ever and anon those blazing eyes of hers rose
before his mental vision, and he saw again that brave, sweet smile with
which she had watched him go.

The morning found him haggard but indomitable, wrestling with the
difficulties of establishing a camp a mile or more from the barracks out
in the rain-drenched open. There had been fourteen deaths in the night,
and seven men were still fighting a losing battle for their lives in the
hospital. He had a native officer to help him in his task; young Harley
was superintending the digging of graves, and the colonel had gone to
the bungalow where the two stricken officers lay.

Dank and gruesome dawned the day, with the smell of rot in the air and
the sense of death hovering over all. And there came to Merryon a
sudden, overwhelming desire to go back to his bungalow beyond the fetid
town and see how his wife was faring. She was the only white woman in