think no worse of the man who dies fearing for others and not for
himself.

In Edward Challoner's paralysed brain there was a great wish to
speak to his daughter, but the words would not come. He looked at
those around him with a dreary indistinctness as from a distance,
almost as if he had begun his long journey and was looking back from
afar.

And so the afternoon wore on to the short southern twilight, and the
goat-bells came tinkling up from the valley--for nature must have
her way though men may die, and milking-time rules through all the
changes.

While the light failed over the land two men were riding through it
as fast as horse could lay hoof to the ground. They were on the
small road running from the Soller highway up to the Val d'Erraha,
and he who led the way seemed to know every inch of it. This was
Henry FitzHenry, and his companion, ill at ease in a Spanish saddle,
was the doctor of Her Majesty's gunboat Kittiwake.

Four months earlier, by one of those chances which seem no chance
when we look back to them, the Kittiwake had broken down on leaving
the anchorage of Port Mahon. Towed back by a consort, she had been
there ever since, awaiting some necessary pieces of machinery to be
made in England and sent out to her. Hearing by chance that the
navigating lieutenant of the Kittiwake was Henry FitzHenry--usually
known as Fitz--Mr. Challoner had written to Minorca from the larger
island, introducing himself as the Honourable Mrs. Harrington's
cousin, and offering what poor hospitality the Val d'Erraha had to