"Dr. Anstice! Is it really—you?"

Iris stood opposite to him with an expression of wondering surprise in her wide grey eyes, and as he held her hand in his Anstice noted the beating of a little blue vein in her temple—a sure sign, with this girl, of some inward agitation which could not be altogether concealed.

"Yes. It is really I." Although he spoke calmly he was to the full as agitated as she, and he could not keep his eager eyes from studying her face, in which he found a dozen new beauties for which their separation had not prepared him. She was a little thinner than he remembered her, but the African sun had kissed her fine skin so warmly that any pallor which might well distinguish her in these troublous days was effectually disguised.

With an effort he relinquished her hand and spoke with well-simulated indifference.

"It was by the merest chance that Sir Richard and I met in Port Said," he said. "I was taking a holiday—the first I've had for years"—he smiled—"and was only too glad to see a familiar face in a strange land."

"And you have given up your holiday to come to our help," she said in a low voice. "You don't know how thankful I am to see you—but for your own sake I wish you had not come."

"That's rather unkind," he said, with a smile. "Here have I been flattering myself that you would welcome me—well, warmly—and you as good as tell me I am not wanted!"

"Indeed I did not mean that." She too smiled, but quickly grew grave again. "If you only knew how glad I am to see you. We—we are in rather a bad way here, you know, Dr. Anstice, and—and your help will be valuable in more ways than one."

"I hope it may prove so," he said. Anstice and Hassan had made a perilous, but successful, entry into the little Fort, pursued, it is true, by a shower of bullets, for the Bedouins were armed with a strange collection of weapons, ranging from antique long-barrelled guns to modern rifles. "May I see him at once? The sooner the better, as I am here at last."

"Yes. I want you to see him as soon as possible." Iris hesitated, and in her eyes was the shadow of a haunting dread. "You will find him very ill, I am afraid. We have done what we could—Mrs. Wood has been splendid—but he doesn't seem to get any better. Of course in ordinary circumstances we should not have dared to move him, but we had to do it, and I am sure it has been very bad for him."

"Well, we must see what we can do now," said Anstice in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. "Where is he? On this floor, I suppose?"

"Yes. Next door. One of the rooms which the artist used is furnished, more or less, as a bedroom, and it is fairly comfortable. The other rooms—this and the ones downstairs—are almost empty except for a few chairs and a kind of bench we use for a table."

"I see." Anstice looked round the room, noting the rough stone walls, the ancient, uneven floor, uncovered by so much as a piece of matting; and then his glance returned to the large modern window which looked so incongruous in its mediÆval setting.

The room into which a moment later Iris showed him was of the same shape and size as the one they had just quitted; and boasted the second of the windows which might, were help too long delayed, prove the undoing of the little garrison. It was, however, roughly furnished, though it was evident that the Frenchman, for all his reputed wealth, had been no Sybarite by inclination. The bed was of a common pattern, and the few other things scattered about on the scantily matted floor were of the most primitive description.

As a room for an invalid the apartment certainly left much to be desired; but Anstice did not waste time over his surroundings. He moved quickly towards the bed; and stood looking down upon the man who lay thereon in silence.

And as he looked at the wreck of the once gallant Bruce Cheniston, his heart sank within him; for if ever Death had printed his sign-manual on a living man's face, it was written here too legibly for even an untrained eye to miss its significance.

Cheniston was wasted to a shadow by fever and suffering. From his haggard face his sunken eyes looked out with an expression of anguish which was surely mental as well as physical; and though he evidently recognized his visitor, he was too weak to do more than move one fleshless hand an inch or two towards Anstice by way of greeting.

Hiding the shock Cheniston's appearance had given him as well as he might, Anstice sat down beside the bed and took the painfully thin hand in his own.

"Cheniston, I'm sorry to see you in such a bad way." He spoke very gently, his eyes on the other's face the while. "It was hard luck falling ill out here—but I've brought up several things from Cairo that will give you relief in no time."

Over Cheniston's face flitted the ghost of a smile; and his voice, when he replied, gave Anstice a fresh shock, so thready and devoid of all tone was it.

"Thanks—very much—Anstice." He spoke slowly, with spaces between the words. "I'm very ill—I know—I think I'm going—to peg out—but I can't bear—to think—of Iris."

He stopped, quite exhausted by the effort of speech; and Anstice, more moved than he cared to show, laid the thin hand back on the bed, and took his patient's temperature, his heart sinking still lower as he read the thermometer's unimpeachable testimony.

Strive as he might, he could not rid himself of a fear that Bruce Cheniston's earthly race was ran; and catching sight of Iris' face as she stood on the opposite side of the bed, he felt, with a quick certainty, that she too realized that only by a miracle could her husband be restored to the health and vigour to which his young manhood surely entitled him.

"Come, Cheniston," he said presently, in answer to Bruce's last words, "you mustn't talk of pegging out. You have been bad, I can see that, but you know dozens of travellers in Egypt enjoy a taste of enteric and come through it as good as new. You got this through drinking polluted water, I understand?"

"Yes." Bruce smiled, haggardly, once more. "Too bad, wasn't it, that after playing with water ever since I came out here it should turn on me in the end. Serves me right—for—trusting an Arab—I suppose."

His voice died weakly away; and Anstice gently bade him keep quiet for a while.

"No use talking and exciting yourself," he said, for he could see the other's stock of strength was lamentably small. "Lie still and allow me to talk over affairs with Mrs. Cheniston—we will put our heads together and evolve some plan for your benefit." He hardly knew what he said, so filled was his heart with a pity in which now there was no faintest tinge of resentment for the unfair bargain which this man had once driven with him.

With a sigh Cheniston closed his eyes, and appeared to relapse once more into a kind of stupor; and when, in obedience to a silent gesture, Iris withdrew to the window, Anstice joined her there immediately.

Such remedies as yet remained to be tried Anstice determined to employ; but though he told himself fiercely that if mortal man could save Bruce Cheniston from the grave he should assuredly be saved, he experienced that hopeless feeling which all who gaze in the very face of death know only too well; and he did not dare to meet Iris' eyes as he conversed with her in a carefully-lowered tone.

"I'll sit up to-night, Mrs. Cheniston, and you must try to get some sleep. I suppose"—he broke off suddenly, remembering the position in which they stood—"I suppose some of you watch—for the enemy"—he laughed with something of an effort—"every night?"

"Yes. I don't think we any of us slept last night," said Iris quietly. "You see we are so short-handed—only Mr. Wood and Mr. Garnett and Hassan know anything about fire-arms; and Mrs. Wood and I, and Rosa, Mrs. Wood's nurse, have been busy looking after Bruce and little Molly Wood."

"Of course. Well, I think the first thing to do, after I have given Mr. Cheniston this"—he had been mixing something in a little glass as he spoke—"is to meet and hold a council of war, with a view to the most useful disposition of our forces. After all"—he spoke more lightly, so keen was his desire to see her look less anxious—"we are not by any means a force to be despised. We have four able-bodied men among us; and this place, from what I can gather, looks pretty impregnable, on one side at least."

"Yes. Even Mr. Garnett admits that the Bedouins could hardly swarm up that rocky wall," said Iris, with a slightly more cheerful air. "And of course, too, we have not got to hold out indefinitely; for if my father reaches Cairo in good time we may have the relieving force here in less than three days."

"Of course we may!" His tone was resolutely optimistic. "Now, as soon as Mr. Cheniston drinks this we'll set to work."

He approached the bed, and having with some difficulty roused Cheniston from his stupor, administered the dose deftly; after which he turned to Iris once more.

"You spoke of a nurse just now. Who is she?"

"Oh, she is only a children's nurse, and rather a broken reed at the best of times," said Iris ruefully. "She had hysterics all last night, but she's a bit more sensible to-day."

"Hysterics or no, she can keep watch for half an hour," said Anstice rather grimly. "Suppose you find her and send her to me. Would you mind?"

"I'll go at once." Iris turned towards the door, and Anstice noted with a pang at his heart that she was certainly thinner and moved with less buoyancy than of old. "You—you won't be too severe with her, Dr. Anstice? After all, she is only a young girl, and she has gone through quite a lot since yesterday morning!"

"Oh, I won't bite her head off," said Anstice, with a short laugh of genuine amusement. "But we have no use for hysterical young women here; and no doubt when she understands that she will amend her ways."

"Very well. I will go and find her." With a last look towards the bed Iris vanished; and for a brief moment Anstice was left alone, to wonder at the strange and unexpected situation in which he now found himself, shut up in this lonely building in the heart of the desert with a handful of souls for whose safety he could not but feel himself largely responsible.

He did not attempt to disguise from himself that the outlook was decidedly unpromising. Even though Sir Richard reached Cairo without mishap, some time must necessarily elapse before he could gather together what Iris had called the relieving force; and although Anstice had no reason to doubt the staunchness and courage of his fellow-defenders, he could not fail to realize that as a fighting unit they were altogether outmatched by the two or three score of enemies who were by now, apparently, thirsting savagely for their blood.

Then, too, the shadow of death already hovered over the little garrison; and as Anstice turned once more to survey the pale and wasted features of the man who had supplanted him in the one supreme desire of his life, he told himself that it would be a miracle if Bruce Cheniston lived long enough to see the arrival of the help on which so much depended.

"If I had got here a week—three days ago, I might have done something," he told himself rather hopelessly. "But now I'm very much afraid it is too late. He is going to die, I'm pretty sure of that, though I hope to God I may be mistaken; and heaven only knows what will happen in the course of the next three days."

As he reached this point in his meditations a voice in his ear made him start; and turning, he beheld a pale and distraught-looking young woman who might in happier circumstances have laid claim to a certain uninspired prettiness. At this moment, however, her eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep, her ashy-coloured hair limp and dishevelled round her unintellectual forehead, she was rather a piteous object; and in spite of his resolve to speak bracingly to her Anstice's voice was quite gentle as he replied to her murmured question.

"Yes, I am Dr. Anstice, and I want you to be good enough to sit here and look after Mr. Cheniston while I talk over matters with the other gentlemen."

"Yes, sir." She cast a swift look at the bed, and then hastily averted her pale-brown eyes. "Mr. Cheniston—he—he won't die, will he, sir? I mean, not immediate, like?"

"No, he will not die immediately," said Anstice reassuringly. "All you have to do is to sit here, beside the bed"—he had noticed how she kept her distance from the aforesaid bed, and placed her in the chair he had vacated with a firm pressure there was no resisting—"and watch Mr. Cheniston carefully. If he shows signs of waking come for me. But don't disturb him in any way. You understand?"

The girl said, rather whimperingly, that she did; and with a last glance at Cheniston, who still lay sunk in a dreary stupor, Anstice went quietly from the room in search of his comrades in misfortune.

He found them in the room in which he had first seen Iris; and he joined the conclave without loss of time.

"Oh, here you are!" Iris broke off in the middle of a sentence and came forward. "Mrs. Wood, this is Dr. Anstice; and this"—she turned to a tall, clean-shaven man dressed, rather unconventionally, in the clothes of a clergyman—"is Mr. Wood. Here is Mr. Garnett, and that is all, with the exception of Molly."

She drew forward a child of about Cherry Carstairs' age, a pale, fragile child in whose face Anstice read plainly the querulousness of an inherited delicacy of constitution.

"She ought really to be asleep," said Mrs. Wood, a short, rather good-looking woman of a florid type, whose subdued voice and air were at variance with the cheerful outline of her features. "But somehow night and day have got mixed up at present—in fact, my watch has stopped, and I don't know what time it is."

"It is just ten o'clock, Mrs. Wood." It was Roger Garnett who volunteered the information; and as Anstice turned to discover what manner of man the speaker might be he was relieved to find that the young Australian wore an unmistakably militant air. He was of average height, with powerful shoulders; and in his blue eyes burned a lust for battle which was in no way diminished by the fact that his left arm was bound up just below the elbow.

"Brute dotted me one there," he explained casually as he saw Anstice's glance fall on the bandage. "Thought at first he'd broken a bone, but he hadn't. It was only a flesh wound, and Mrs. Wood did it up in the most approved St. John style!"

"I'll look at it for you presently, if you like," said Anstice, "though it appears to be most scientifically bandaged. Now, what I should like to know is this. Did these fellows attack you last night? They did? At what time—and in what force did they come?"

"It was just before dawn—the recognized time for a night attack, eh?" Garnett's blue eyes twinkled. "They thought it was going to be a soft job, I believe; but they had apparently forgotten that the door was pretty well impregnable, thanks to the jolly old bandit, or whatever he was, who used to retire here with his doubtless ill-gotten gains! And as they had forgotten to provide themselves with any means of reaching these windows the attack failed, so to speak."

"I gather you were looking out? Any casualties?" Anstice put the question coolly; and young Garnett grinned.

"Yes, siree—one for which by the grace of God I may consider myself responsible. They were all arguing in the courtyard below when I gave them a kind of salute from up here, and by gosh, you should have seen the beggars scatter! One of them got it in the thigh, at least so I deduce from the fact that he had to be assisted away, groaning!"

"They didn't return?"

"No. Clambered over the wall and made tracks for home, sweet home instanter."

"To tell you the truth, Dr. Anstice"—it was Mr. Wood who spoke, and Anstice turned quickly towards him—"I do not myself believe that they will attack us again at present. They have now found it impossible to force an entrance unseen; and I should not be surprised if their plan of campaign included waiting, and trying to starve us out. A policy of masterly inaction, so to speak."

"Do you know, I rather agree with the Padre," said Garnett thoughtfully. "Of course they have not a notion that we have sent for help; and though they saw Dr. Anstice arrive with Hassan, it is quite possible that in the dusk they thought it was one of us who had made a futile sortie with the Arab."

"I daresay you are right," said Anstice thoughtfully. "But I suppose you do not propose we should relax our vigilance on that account?"

"No." Mr. Wood looked keenly at the speaker, and appeared reassured by something he read in the other's face. "Last night we watched both this window and that of the other room—the one where Mr. Cheniston is lying——"

"It is unfortunate that he should be in one of the rooms where there is a possibility of trouble," said Anstice, rather worried by the notion. "I suppose the others are really uninhabitable?"

"Well, there is no possibility of admitting sufficient air," said Mrs. Wood practically. "There is a little hole where we snatch a moment's rest now and then, but for a man with fever——"

"No, I suppose he must stay where he is." Anstice genuinely regretted the necessity. "The only thing to do is to try to draw the enemy's fire to the other window, if occasion arises. Now, how do we divide our forces? Mrs. Cheniston"—he spoke the name firmly now—"you, I suppose, will watch your husband, and if I may suggest that I take the window in that room under my charge—Hassan might be at hand to take my place when I'm occupied with Mr. Cheniston——"

"Then Mr. Garnett and I will be responsible for the watch in this room," said the clergyman quietly. "The others—my wife and Rosa—can take it in turn to relieve Mrs. Cheniston. How does that plan strike you, Dr. Anstice?" By common consent they began to look on Anstice as their leader.

"A very sensible plan," said Mrs. Wood quickly, "But I positively insist upon Mrs. Cheniston having some sleep. She was up all night and has not rested a moment to-day."

"What about me, Mummy?" A rather fretful little voice interrupted the speaker, as Molly pressed closely to her side. "What's me and Rosa going to do? There isn't any beds and the bench is so hard!"

"Poor kiddie!" Anstice's heart was touched by this lamentable wail. "Suppose you let me see what I can do to make you a bed, Molly! I'm a doctor, you know, and doctors know more about making beds than ordinary people!"

The child regarded him with lack-lustre eyes which were quite devoid of any childish gaiety; and for a moment she appeared to revolve the question in her mind. Finally she decided that he was to be trusted, for she nodded her weary little head and put her thin, hot hand into the one he extended to her.

"The room opposite to this is our bedroom," said Iris, with a faint smile. "Shall I come too, Molly, and show Dr. Anstice where to find the things?"

"Yes. You come too." The other moist hand sought Iris' cooler one; and between them they led the poor child into the room Iris indicated.

Here, with a little ingenuity, a bed was made up of chairs and cushions, which Molly was too worn out to resist; and having seen her sink at once into an uneasy slumber, the two returned to the larger room, where the others still held whispered conclave.

"Dr. Anstice"—Iris laid her hand on his arm, her voice full of the sweetest contrition—"you have had nothing to eat and you must be famished."

"I'm not hungry," he assured her truthfully; but she refused to listen to his protests; and calling Mrs. Wood to her assistance she soon had a meal ready for him. Although the resources of the establishment were limited to tinned food and coffee boiled over a little spirit stove, Anstice was in no mood to criticize anything which Iris set before him. Indeed he could hardly take his eyes from her as she ministered to him; and the food he ate might have been manna for anything he knew to the contrary.

Having finished his hasty meal and assured his kind hostesses that he felt a hundred per cent better thereby, Anstice turned to Mr. Wood with a new seriousness.

"It is nearly eleven o'clock," he said, "and I suppose we should be thinking of taking up our positions? If you and Mr. Garnett are ready, I'll call Hassan to take charge of the other window for a little while, and have a look at my patient yonder."

The other men agreed; and Anstice left them stationing themselves at their posts while he entered the next room and relieved the frightened Rosa from her task of watching the invalid.

As he approached Cheniston's side he saw that as yet no fatal change had occurred. Bruce still lay in a kind of stupor, half-sleep, half-unconsciousness; but his pulse was not perceptibly weaker, and for a wild moment Anstice considered the possibility of his patient's recovery—a possibility which, however, he dared hardly entertain as he looked at the haggard face, the sunken eyes, the peeling lips.

When Iris entered a minute or two later Anstice gave her a few directions, bidding her call him immediately should Bruce awaken; and as she acquiesced and sat down on the hard chair lately vacated by the maid, Anstice looked at her with a feeling of rather helpless compassion.

"Mrs. Cheniston, I'm so awfully sorry to have to ask you to sit up. You're worn out, I know, and I wish you could get some sleep."

"Oh, don't bother about me!" She smiled up at him, and his heart contracted within him at the look of fatigue in her face. "I'm immensely strong, you know—and I can sleep to-morrow. Only"—the smile faded out of her eyes, leaving them very sad—"do you think there is any possibility of Bruce being better in the morning?"

"Yes—he is no worse than when I saw him an hour or two ago," Anstice assured her. "And in a bad case like this even a negative boon of that kind is something to be thankful for."

She looked at him again, rather wistfully this time; but he did not meet her eyes; and presently he withdrew, leaving her to her lonely watch; while he went to take up his vigil at the window in preparation for any possible attack.

But that night passed without adventure of any kind.