just between the two last sangars on the enemy’s left.  I didn’t write a word about it to you before.  I was so afraid I might be wrong.  I got leave and used to creep up the nullah in the darkness to the tongue of the glacier with a little telescope and lie hidden all day behind a boulder working out the way, until darkness came again and allowed me to get back to camp.  At last I felt sure, and I suggested the plan to Ralston the Political Officer, who carried it to the General-in-Command.  The General himself came out with me, and I pointed out to him that the cliffs were so steep just beneath the sangars that we might take the men who garrisoned them by surprise, and that in any case they could not fire upon us, while sharpshooters from the cliffs on our side of the nullah could hinder the enemy from leaving their sangars and rolling down stones.  I was given permission to try and a hundred Gurkhas to try with.  We left camp that night at half-past seven, and crept up the nullah with our blankets to the foot of the climb, and there we waited till the morning.”

The years of training to which Linforth had bent himself with a definite aim began, in a word, to produce their results.  In the early morning he led the way up the steep face of cliffs, and the Gurkhas followed.  One of the sharpshooters lying ready on the British side of the nullah said that they looked for all the world like a black train of ants.  There were thirteen hundred feet of rock to be scaled, and for nine hundred of it they climbed undetected.  Then from a sangar lower down the line where the cliffs of the nullah curved outwards they were seen and the alarm was given.  But for awhile the defenders of the threatened position did not understand the danger, and when they did a hail of bullets kept them in their shelters.  Linforth followed by his Gurkhas was seen to reach the top of the cliffs and charge the sangars from the rear.  The defenders were driven out and bayoneted, the sangars seized, and the Chilti force enfolded while reinforcements clambered in support.  “In three hours the position, which for eighteen days had resisted every attack and held the British force immobile, was in our hands.  The way is clear in front of us.  Manders is recommended for the Victoria Cross.  I believe that I am for the D.S.O.  And above all the Road goes on!”

Thus characteristically the letter was concluded.  Linforth wrote it with a flush of pride and a great joy.  He had no doubt now that he would be appointed to the Road.  Congratulations were showered upon him.  Down upon the plains, Violet would hear of his achievement and perhaps claim proudly and joyfully some share in it herself.  His heart leaped at the thought.  The world was going very well for Dick Linforth that night.  But that is only one side of the picture.  Linforth had no thoughts to spare upon Shere Ali.  If he had had a thought, it would not have been one of pity.  Yet that unhappy Prince, with despair and humiliation gnawing at his heart, broken now beyond all hope, stricken in his fortune as sorely as in his love, was fleeing with a few devoted followers through the darkness.  He passed through Kohara at daybreak of the second morning after the battle had been lost, and stopping only to change horses, galloped off to the north.