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Seven miles of armed environment mocks the caged tigers behind these hard-held ramparts. Facing north and east, the gladiators of the morrow lie on their arms, ready now for the summons to fall in, for a wild rush on Sherman's pressing lines. It is no holiday camp, with leafy bowers and lovely ladies straying in the moonlight. No dallying and listening to Romeos in gray and gold.

In the tiny glow of Brennan's cigarette John noticed a hint of a smile on the other's lips as he recited: "So long as 'neath the Kalka hills The Tonga-horn shall ring, So long as down the Solon dip The hard-held ponies swing, So long as Tara Divi sees The lights of Simla town, So long as Pleasure calls us up, And duty drives us down, If you love me as I love you. What pair so happy as we two?"

Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the driven snow-dust filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery; between the black horns of Raieng where they heard the whistle of the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hard-held between shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the Cut Road under Bhagirati; swinging and creaking to the steady jog-trot of the descent into the Valley of the Waters; pressed along the steamy levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off Kedarnath; set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly oak-forests; passed from village to village in dawn-chill, when even devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by torchlight, when the least fearful think of ghosts the dooli has reached her last stage.

In the brighter light they discerned each other. Cairns was first to see, for he had been told, and he brought to the meeting all the fresh inspirations of his maturity, and they rested upon the solid values earned through a life of hard-held decency. Among the May days there was one afternoon in which the conception of summer was in the air.

A Moor of some means came by, riding at a hard-held ambling walk his star-gazing white mule: the high-peaked saddle and bridle were of scarlet cloth, the stirrup-leathers of scarlet twisted wool; he wore a creamy woollen haik, falling in soft folds down to his yellow slippers, a turban whose snowy disc of enormous size framed his cinnamon-coloured face in symmetrical folds of spotless white, and the top of a scarlet fez showed in the centre of it.

So quietly and so gravely, in truth, that her gust of rage subsided before the low-spoken menace of the words. No quick anger was his but a steady and deadly purpose. Again she felt the hard-held force, the mystery of the man, as if flowing suddenly upward from subterranean channels. What wrong had he suffered, what undeserved torture at the hands of this man and others thus to freeze his soul?

But for Dick's sake whatever this mad blankness might mean she must make no sign. Her voice choked with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck 'Oh, Dick, it is good! He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. 'Won't you have it, then? I'll send it over to your house if you will. 'I? Oh yes thank you.

"Ay," he answered, grimly quiet, "a summons from the Duke." And he tossed it across the table to her. I saw that fateful document float an instant in the air, and then, thrown out of poise by the blob of wax, swoop slanting to her lap. "It will come no doubt as a surprise to you," he growled; and upon that his hard-held passion burst all bonds that he could impose upon it.

There is of course a picturesque element in it white turbans, white garments streaming in the wind, scarlet saddles, flashing steel, hard-held horses with yards of tail, and above all, the lithe figures in perfect balance whatever their positions; but the performance is often too "ragged" to be impressive, and it strenuously demands flats of desert as a background.

I get the big peroxide blonde." "You can have her. Too big. I like the little yellowhead a lot better." Newman sneered into the hard-held face so close to his and said: "And don't think for a second you can make me crawl, you small-time, chiseling punk. Rub me out after we kill them off and you get nowhere. You're dead. Chew on that a while, and you'll know who's boss."