Page:Harold Lamb--Marching Sands.djvu/136

 servant. She was thinking, and it seemed to please her. But thought, with the girl, required companionship and conversation.

Abruptly she left her chair and stepped through the door of the tent. It was still drizzling without; still, there was a break in the heavy clouds to the west. Mary noted this, and skipped to the entrance of the yurt nearest her.

"It's me, Uncle Singh," she called, not quite grammatically. "Can I come in?"

"Of course," a kindly voice answered at once. "Anything wrong?"

A man sat up on the cot, snapping on an electric torch by the head of the bed and glancing at a small clock. He was a tall, spare individual, with the frame of an athlete, polo shoulders, and the high brow of a scholar.

He was well past middle age, yellow-brown as to face, deep hollows under the cheek bones, his scanty hair matching his face, except where it was streaked with white.

The girl installed herself snugly on the foot of the bed, sitting cross-legged.

"You've been sleeping heavily, Sher Singh," she observed reproachfully, giving the man his native surname, "and that means you aren't well. I have news." She paused triumphantly, then bubbled spontaneously into speech.

"Such news. Aie. Captain Robert Gray is here,