The Cavalry Hospital was a little way out of the town, a quaint old place with oleanders and orange trees set in tubs outside its white verandahs. As they drove thither Dr. Forsyth told her something of the case in which he wanted her help. It was a prisoner, presumably an officer, but he refused name or rank. He had been found two days after the battle, lying, with one leg smashed to bits, under his dead horse in a little ravine. How he had lived was a marvel, for he was quite an old man; but, not only had he done so, he had also retained consciousness, and had addressed those who found him in perfect English, congratulating them courteously on their marvellous exploit, and saying he was proud to have crossed swords with them.

A game old fellow, worthy of his hospital nickname "The General." He had actually begged, before they moved him, that someone would be good enough to search in the holster of the dead horse beside him for a gold snuffbox which he had been unable to reach, and the lack of which had, he asserted, been his greatest discomfort.

"He has been snuffing away ever since," added the doctor, "so perhaps he was right, for his leg was almost too crushed to belong to him. We took it off at once; but now gangrene is setting in and if he is to be saved we must have it off higher up. And the others won't risk it. He is old--heart weak--and they say won't stand chloroform. I am going to try. I've told him and he will take the risk. A good old chap, worth saving. I don't believe he is a Russian. I think he is a Pole, and blood is thicker than water."

Marrion's first look at the patient as he lay propped up by pillows in the small room whither he had been carried made her agree with the doctor.

It was a fine old face, curiously reminiscent of someone she had seen somewhere, with its hint of ruddiness beneath the grey of the hair and its bold bright daring look. And he was very tall; his long length almost outstretched the trestle bed.

"Good morning, doctor!" he said, with a courteous salute which included Marrion, and with a perfect English accent. "You have brought your nurse, I see. Are we to begin at once?"

There was no anxiety in his voice; only gentle raillery.

"Not quite yet, General," replied Dr. Forsyth. "I want you to have a rest and sleep first. You are looking a bit tired; and your pulse"--he stopped to feel it--"is tired, too. So I've brought Nurse Paul to sit with you. She is a curiously soporific person. I shall be back before very long," he added, more to her than to the patient.

Left alone, Marrion went up to the bed, smoothed the rough pillows, straightened the coarse blanket, which was all the bedding Balaklava could produce, and said quietly--

"Now, if you will close your eyes I believe you would sleep."

But those sea-blue eyes--whose did they resemble?--someone she had seen somewhere--remained wide, and watched her narrowly as she returned to seat herself in the only chair. It was set full in the sunlight, which showed her tall, slender, yet strong in her dark stuff dress, a white handkerchief almost hiding her bright hair and pinned to place by the little brilliant brooch beneath her chin. Truly those keen eyes were over-watchful, and she was about again to suggest sleep when his voice, full of insistent command, startled her.

"Where did you get that brooch?"

She replied at once with the truth.

"It belonged to my father."

"Indeed--who was he?"

"He was a valet; but if you would only close your eyes I think you would go to sleep."

"Do you think so? I don't."

His eyes showed more awake than ever; there was a hint of a smile on the handsome old face.

Still there was silence for full five minutes, and Marrion was just about to make further suggestion of sleep when once more the voice rose--

"Will you please give me my snuff-box?--it is under my pillow somewhere."

She drew it out. A plain gold box with--her startled eyes caught the old face--

"Yes!" he said, and his voice had a jeer in it. "'P.P.,' as you see. That is my name. So you are Marrion Sim's child--and I suppose mine. Queer, isn't it, how these old stories crop up when one had almost forgotten them?" He scanned her face narrowly. "Now you are angry. Why should you be? Your mother was my wife, I suppose. At least, I hadn't any other then. I have sons now"--his voice softened as he spoke--"yes, sons to come after me when I am gone, as I shall be soon, for that gay doctor of yours can't conquer Fate; and it is Fate that has brought me here!"

He lay looking at her with a certain kindly curiosity, while she, startled out of herself, tried to realise that this was her father--the father she had condemned and despised all her life.

It seemed almost as if he saw into her thoughts, for his next words touched them.

"Perhaps it was cruel to leave her as I did; but I had no choice. If you have anything belonging to us in you, you'll understand what the call of the master means. And young Muir was never my master. He befriended me, helped me to escape Siberia; but the other---- There's a perfect passion of loyalty in our family which you may or may not understand." He paused and a shiver of assent ran through Marrion.

"I--I think I do understand," she said, in a low voice.

Yes, from the very beginning, as a small child, this passion of protection, of loyalty, had been hers. Strange legacy from an unknown father! He smiled content.

"Glad to hear it. You're not a bit like your mother--you're like me, and your brothers--half-brothers, I mean. So I had to go. It was just after the break up of Europe and Napoleon, when half the political refugees came to their own again--and he did amongst others. So I had to go." Again he paused, and for the first time Marrion felt the touch of kinship between them. He had to go; that was just it! She had had to be loyal to Duke. "You are not in the least like your mother," he said again suddenly, "you are like us." Yet again he paused. "Have you anything you can give me to drink?" he asked. "I have something to say to you, and I feel--limp."

She gave him a restorative and he brisked up. Time was passing, but she had learnt many things during the last month and knew that physical rest would be impossible until the mental rest was assured.

"Don't talk too much," she said. "I think I shall understand--what is it?"

"This box," he said. "It holds--my credentials. There is a false top--see, you press this spring--so."

As he spoke the lid appeared to part in two, disclosing a folded piece of paper.

"Don't read it now--but it will tell you everything. I was on secret service and it was of importance no one should know. It is of importance still. If I hadn't met you I should have said nothing. But now--you'll do me this good turn, I expect--for, after all, I am your father."

A cynical smile curved his lips, his blue eyes met hers in a challenge.

Almost staggered by the strangeness of what was happening, Marrion was yet aware of something deep down in her which gave instant response to this claim upon her.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I will do what you wish--father."

"I am obliged--daughter," he replied lightly. "Of course it is for your eye alone. And now for heaven's sake give me some more of that drink. I feel quite exhausted." He lay back smiling at her. "It is better here," he remarked, "than in the north of Scotland." Then after a pause, "I suppose I ought not to have married your mother; but she was charming and it was very dull." After that he closed his eyes and slept. The doctor, coming in after an hour, found him still sleeping, while Marrion sat beside the bed holding the gold snuffbox in her hand.

He bent over the slumbering face.

"I don't think there will be any operation," he said quietly. "The others were right. His mind has ceased to insist upon his body surviving and so there is rest. It is well."

Marrion looked up into his wise face.

"How did you guess?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There was no guess," he replied; "you remember I had seen your father. Then your extraordinary likeness. When by chance I saw the famous snuff-box yesterday it became a certainty. For a day I decided to say nothing. Then I saw the old chap was fighting death--putting a strain on himself about something, and I thought you had better have your innings."

He did not ask any questions and she was grateful.

"Perhaps you would like to stay," he added gently. "I don't think he will wake again."

And he did not. As the sunlight faded from the room the old man's breathing became slower and ceased.

Marrion stood looking down on him for a moment before she called for aid. All the time she had been watching she had been thinking, thinking; but she had arrived at nothing. Only deep down in her was a glad feeling of inheritance--a consciousness that the dead man had given her something, something that she held in trust.

Was it only the gold snuff-box, she wondered vaguely, as, back in her own tent, she touched the spring.

"The bearer of this, Prince Paul Pauloffski----" She sat staring at the words.

Prince Paul Pauloffski was her father. Then she was gentle born. Then she need not--

With a rush all the things she need not have done crushed in on her. She buried her face in the pillow as she sat on the edge of her bed and muttered--

"People who play Providence!"

Of a truth the wise man with the strange eyes was right. Your past was karma. You could not escape from it.

After a time she sat up and began to decipher the rest. It was in French, the lingua franca of Eastern diplomacy. Noble-born, poor, devoted, daring. That was the essence of the credentials. The other paper simply gave the address of the ancestral home and that of two sons in the army. A memorandum as to keys and papers filled up the back of the latter. She replaced them, shut down the spring again, then, remembering she could show no right to the snuff-box for which inquiry was sure to be made, took them out again. Nothing, somehow, seemed to matter now. She had made her mistake, she must suffer.

"You have all you want?" asked Doctor Forsyth, as she handed him the box, and she flushed scarlet. Sometimes he seemed to her too clever--he found out everything, everything!

"Thank you," she replied frigidly.

"Because--well, if you would like to possess it, I could buy it in for you at the auction. The poor old general is--is unidentified, remember."

"Yes, he is unidentified," she assented, remembering her father's wishes, "but I should like to have it all the same."

He brought it to her a day or two after. "That's your fee," he said lightly, "you've earned it well."

And he would take no refusal; so she replaced the papers in the secret compartment and put the box away in her satchel against--what? That future which was now always filling her mind. The present seemed hardly to touch her at all. The doctor looked at her critically more than once, but he said nothing.

Then came Inkerman. It was on the 5th of November--almost three months, Marrion told herself, since that wonderful day when Duke's love had come to her amid flame and fire.

It had been a disturbed night. A noise as of tumbrils had been heard about the city. Was it possible that the enemy was taking advantage of the dense night fog to run in commissariat or even ammunition? Nothing could be done, however, save wait. So as the laggard day broke, the advanced pickets looked keenly ahead. To no purpose. An impenetrable wall of grey mist shut out all beyond a yard or two. Their very comrades looked like shadows of men.

"London partickler," remarked one sentry, stamping his feet to keep out the chill, for it had been raining all night.

"Not yeller enough, save down Chelsea way. My Gawd! I wish I was ther," replied the next.

"I wish I wurr anywhere but eight thousand strong on the heights of Inkerman," put in an Irishman. "Begorra, I've bin dhrier in a bog!"

"An' I've been wetter in the watter after the trooties on Don side," evened an Aberdeenshire man sturdily. "Mush me, it's weary wark!"

"An' thim ringing joy-bells for to spite us!" joked the Irishman, as on the cold night air a carillon from every church in the city rang out, echoing amongst the little scrub and wood-set ravines that went to make up the valley of Inkerman. "Will it be a weddin', likely? Begorra, I'd loose off me rifle as a salute if the powdther was dry!"

So through the early dawn the pickets, outwearied, wet through, beguiled the time. And though the dawn brought light, the mist lay thicker than ever. Thick and grey the colour of a Russian's coat.

"Dods, mon!" cried the Aberdeenshire man suddenly, "what's yon?"

Yon was indeed a Russian coat, not one but many, emerging out of the fog not ten yards away.

A sharp volley of musketry followed on the instant. The pickets may have been sodden, but they were no cowards. They fought desperately, retreating inch by inch, the alarm of their rifles telling that sixty thousand Russians were on them surging through the newly awakened camp of eight thousand. It was everyone to the rescue. Not one regiment or two, but every available man. Then followed eight long hours of such desperate fighting as, till then, had never been seen. It was not a battle--it was a hundred battles in one; for every little ravine had its opposing armies, cut off from the rest by the enveloping mist. Again and again the grey line would advance a yard or two, covered by its superior fire; again and again a ringing British cheer and the point of the bayonet would drive it back a yard or two. Sometimes the fight became a mÊlÉe in which the British officers, dealing havoc with their revolvers or swords, cut their way through the dense masses of the enemy. No generalship was possible, each man fought for himself, his Queen, his country, and wrote on the page of history a record of undying pluck and almost incredible personal courage. But the battle of Inkerman is, truly, beyond description. It was a day of countless deeds of daring, of despairing rallies and desperate assaults in the glens, the brushwood glades, the torrent beds of the valley of the Tchernaya river. None knew how the balance swayed and shifted. But a few were aware of the aid given in the nick of time by the six thousand French troops who arrived at the double. None knew whose was the victory till from the Russian ranks came the bugles of retreat. And then, as the mist lifted, the whole hillside showed strewn with corpses. But the eight thousand had kept at bay the sixty thousand. Round Sandbag battery, from which the Guards were driven, and which they retook four separate times, lay fifteen thousand Russian dead, mute evidence of the hand to hand, back to back, relentless tenacity with which the Household Brigade eventually fought their way out of the surrounding masses of the foe. A little further, where a single regiment held at bay over nine thousand Russians, the broken stocks of the rifles showed how, when ammunition was gone, the fight still continued.

"Will anyone be kind enough to lift me off my horse?" said old General Strangways, when riding to an exposed position in the hope of being able to see something of what his men were doing, a shell literally blew off his leg. And someone lifted him down doubtless; but there were eight generals to be seen to, and close on a hundred and fifty officers.

As the official despatches read--

"It does not do to dwell upon the aspect of the battlefield." True, indeed, when out of the eight thousand some two thousand six hundred lay dead or wounded among the fourteen thousand Russians for whom they had accounted.

Even Doctor Forsyth's pale, composed face grew paler, less composed, and Marrion acting as his aide could scarcely get through the awful days. She could not work as she wished to work, but neither could she rest. Her whole being seemed to go out in one vast pity for the world, a vast desire to protect, to recreate.

"I am sorry my hand shook," she said, almost pitifully to the doctor, when she held she had failed to give him all the help she should have done over a young lad who had been brought in badly hurt. "But he seemed so very young. It made me think of the time when all these poor boys were babies in their mothers' arms, warm, secure, sheltered."

He looked at her gravely.

"You did very well," he said. "Not quite so well as usual, perhaps; but better than others. For all that, I am going to send you for a rest--only a week or two," he added hastily, seeing her face set in denial. "And it's as useful as anything else. You know there are quite a lot of soldiers' wives down in the town. There ought not to be, of course, but there are---- Why, there is one, at least, in the camp! And one, an Irishwoman, has just died with her third baby--shock--husband killed. And there is no one to see to them and others. You'd better go--you--you like children."

To tell the truth Marrion felt a strange gladness at the thought of them, and the very idea of holding the newborn scrap of humanity in her arms was enthralling.

"For a week," she demurred. "You see I haven't been sleeping well."

So down by the sea in a house built on the very rocks of the harbour she went back to woman's normal life and rested for a while.

For the first time she had leisure to notice the beauties of the cliff-set coast, of which the bay was a mere shallow curve. The vessels lying at the roads bobbed and swayed when the wind ruffled the water, almost as if they had been at sea. But it was fine to see them there; ships of the line, merchantmen, gun-boats, mail-steamers, all coming and going. When the two elder children were asleep, Marrion would wrap the infant in a blanket and go and sit on the rocks in the sunshine, watching the boats go backwards and forwards to the shore, and thinking of the far-off Aberdeenshire days when she could pull an oar with any man. The harbour itself, a mere inlet, was crammed with vessels of all descriptions; you could scarcely distinguish one from the other, but the thirty outside showed bravely.

"They say the anchorage is very treacherous," remarked Doctor Forsyth, when he came to see how she was getting on, one evening. "I hear that a captain of one of the transports has reported it dangerous; and has been reprimanded for his trouble. He may have a chance of proving himself right, for the barometer is going down steadily, I'm told; and there is an uncanny feel in the air."

That was about six o'clock in the evening. But the night was calm, warm for the time of the year. It was in the small hours of the 14th that someone relieving watch on one of the ships looked again at the barometer.

"My God!" he exclaimed, "it has fallen two inches in the watch."

Something was astir and the something came with appalling suddenness, almost before the light spars could be shipped and things made taut. And then? What was it? No storm ever seen equalled this boiling cauldron of a sea, this furious blast of bitter wind that lashed the waves of foam and sent them in driving clouds far over the heights. The hawsers, the anchor chains, the cables strained and wrenched and strained, while brave men, looking at the wicked rocks seen dimly by the breaking dawn, knew that their only chance of life lay in the holding of their anchors. An American ship was the first to go. She drifted swiftly to the cliffs and disappeared, timbers and crew. The next to follow was the ship whose captain had given the warning. It made a brief fight for life. The port anchor held--masts, rigging, were cut away. To no purpose. The cable parted, she drifted broadside to the cliff, crashed against it once, twice. A few men were carried by the breakers up the rocks, bruised, mangled. The captain himself was crushed between the rocks and the ship, as he hung from a life-line thrown by those on shore. Another and another and another ship followed in quick succession. The roar of the tempest, the crashing of timbers, the howling of the wind, the noise of the engines straining full speed ahead to hold their anchorage against the storm, drowned all outcry; the terror, the dismay, the despair of it passed as it were in silence. Within the inlet harbour one vessel crashed against the next and so, huddled in heaps, they drifted to pile themselves in shivered hulks upon the shore. Helpless to help, powerless to save, the spectators clinging like limpets to stone walls and stanchions looked on while one after another the brave ships which but the day before had seemed to spurn the waves in their pride were beaten, buffeted, engulfed, submerged in the seething cauldron of surf and spray and mad, infuriated billows, answering to the challenge of the wind. The Prince, the finest vessel in the bay, new built, powerfully engined, held out the longest. There were hopes for her, but the sea willed otherwise. Slowly, slowly the anchor dragged, and five minutes after she struck not a vestige of the good ship remained. Meanwhile on shore the hurricane had brought disaster untold. Houses were roofless, tents swept bodily into the deep ravines with their occupants. It was noon ere the wind abated somewhat, allowing stock to be taken of the damage. Far out at sea could be seen the hulls of the vessels that had weathered the storm, mostly disabled, mastless; but it was known that five-and-twenty vessels had gone down with practically all on board.

As the tempest subsided the bodies of the drowned were dashed by the breakers against the rocks or cast up in tiny creeks upon the beach.

Marrion had taken her charges to a place of safety, the house she was in being too exposed; and then, thinking she might help, went down to the harbour. The waves still ran dangerously high, and over on the farther side Englishmen were busy with lifeboats, rescuing some of the crews of the smaller ships which, having held their anchors so far, were still in imminent danger of going down. As she passed a knot of local fishermen on her way to where apparently help might be required, her eyes followed theirs and she realised to her horror that they were calmly looking at a man--a mere boy--who about sixty yards from the shore was clinging to a stationary spar, part doubtless of some submerged craft. His face was clearly visible, the agonised appeal vitalising its exhaustion, its pallor. Only for a few minutes more could that grip hold! She was alert in an instant.

"Go!" she cried vehemently in Russian. "Quick! A boat is there! Quick--save--for Christ's sake, save!"

Urged more by her actions than her words, the men fell in with them. Ready hands, besides her practised ones, ran down the boat.

But then, no one stirred! It was not an impossible task, it was only dangerous. That, however, was enough. Why should they risk their lives to save an unknown lad--a mere boy? But it was that very youth which appealed to the woman, who stood for an instant with bitter anger at her heart.

"Curse you for cowards!" she cried as she sprang in and seized the oars. The boat, already afloat, shot out from the shore by her weight. The next instant she had the oars in and was fighting for her life--and his. For his--yes, fighting, fighting, fighting for life to something unknown. She set her teeth and dreamed with the appalling swiftness of dreams of the far Northern sea. Yes, she was afloat on it with Duke--no! it was Duke she had to save. It was Duke, or someone belonging to Duke, who clung to that spar now so close, so close----

On shore, a man passing along a quay hard by saw her, and ran down with an oath.

Almost there--almost! She glanced behind her, saw the young face; but only for a second. The hold of the clenched hands relaxed, the head fell back, the body slid into the water. Too late!

No, not too late! Without one instant's hesitation Marrion was over the side, keeping the oar in her left hand as she leapt.

Now she had gripped something floating for a second and was on the surface again, rising within arm's grip of the oar.

In her ears a thousand voices seemed whispering--Safe, safe, safe! You are the saviour, the creator, the protectress.--She struck out boldly. Then a huge breaker took her to its breast and held her fast.

When she came to herself she was lying on a bed and looking round she realised that she was in the very room of the cavalry hospital where her father had died. It had been the nearest place, she supposed. The sunlight was streaming in. She was quite alone. Doubtless everyone was busy--they always were.

Then on a table within reach she saw a cup of milk and a glass. A paper lay beside them. Scrawled on it, very large, was this advice--

"Take these and go to sleep again!"

It was Doctor Forsyth's writing and with a sense of safety she obeyed.

When she roused again it was evening; the room was almost dark, but a figure stood at the window. In an instant remembrance came back to her and raised a curiosity which had doubtless been lying dormant, as she had been, for nigh six-and-thirty-hours.

"Did I save the boy?" she asked suddenly in a loud strong voice.

Doctor Forsyth, for it was he, smiled as he walked up to the bed.

"I really cannot say, my dear lady, whether you saved him or not. You did your best, anyhow, and the same wave washed you both ashore." He had been feeling her pulse as he spoke. "All right," he continued, "I fancy you can get up if you choose. And you will be a bit busy, for the mail steamer goes to-morrow and you should take the first opportunity of getting home."

She stared at him.

"Home!" she echoed. "I am not going home. I want to work--and I should like to die out here. What is there for me to do at home?"

Doctor Forsyth hesitated a moment. He was ciphering out conclusions. The reason he had to give her was one which must, despite its joy, give pain. Better therefore to speak out while her mind was still too confused to grasp the immensity of either.

"My dear lady," he said, and his voice was gentleness itself, "I must deny all your statements. You are going home. You do not want to die out here, and you will have plenty to do at home looking after"--he paused--"the colonel's child."

He turned and left her voiceless, but athrill to her finger-tips, wondering why she had not guessed it before.

Then with a rush came remembrance. "People who play Providence----"

She gave a moan and turned her face to the wall.