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Rh was the gist of the despatches, eked out by comment and prophecy from various sources to make a startling column and a half.

Teresa read the article several times. It had come, then, the "trouble" that Crayven had foreseen, and that had called him back to his post. And what had come to him there, in his old fort in the desert, with his handful of soldiers? An emergency like this, she knew, had been always before him. Half civilian, half soldier, he was one of those many Englishmen on the outposts of the Empire, living and working obscurely, per- haps fighting and dying obscurely—it was all, as he had said, in the day's work.

She dropped the newspaper and lay back, thinking of him.

She was sure that he would meet his emergency well, with the quiet courage that gives a touch of the heroic to even the simplest human figure. He was steady of nerve and strong of will. He would be calm under fire, he would make the most of his resources. He would assuredly not give way. If there were any dispute about that old powder-magazine and that well—the only water to be had within three days' journey—she could quite see him declining to give it up to a Turkish army camped about him. He was the sort of man who would shut his eyes naturally to the odds against him—and even, out of pure obstinacy perhaps, put a match to the powder-magazine.