Shivering, she seized a wrap, and crept to the tent-entrance.  The flap was unfastened, just as it had been left by her husband the night before.  With shaking fingers she drew it aside and looked forth.

The hubbub of voices had died down to awed whisperings.  A group of coolies huddled in the open space before her like an assembly of monkeys holding an important discussion.

Further away, with distorted limbs and grim, impassive countenance, crouched the black-bearded beggar whose importunity had lured Ralph from her side the previous evening.  His red-rimmed, sunken eyes gazed like the eyes of a dead man straight into the sunrise.  So motionless were they, so utterly void of expression, that she thought they must be blind.  There was something fateful, something terrible in the aloofness of him.  It was as if an invisible circle surrounded him within which none might intrude.

And close at hand—­so close that she could have touched his turbaned head as she stood—­the great Sikh bearer, Peter, sat huddled in a heap on the soft green earth and rocked himself to and fro like a child in trouble.  She knew at the first glance that it was he who had uttered that anguished wail.

To him she turned, as to the only being she could trust in that strange scene.

“Peter,” she said, “what has happened?  What is wrong?  Where—­where is the captain sahib?”

He gave a great start at the sound of her voice above him, and instantly, with a rapid noiseless movement, arose and bent himself before her.

“The mem-sahib will pardon her servant,” he said, and she saw that his dark face was twisted with emotion.  “But there is bad news for her to-day.  The captain sahib has gone.”

“Gone!” Stella echoed the word uncomprehendingly, as one who speaks an unknown language.

Peter’s look fell before the wide questioning of hers.  He replied almost under his breath:  “Mem-sahib, it was in the still hour of the night.  The captain sahib slept on the mountain, and in his sleep he fell—­and was taken away by the stream.”

“Taken away!” Again, numbly, Stella repeated his words.  She felt suddenly very weak and sick.

Peter stretched a hand towards the inscrutable stranger.  “This man, mem-sahib,” he said with reverence, “he is a holy man, and while praying upon the mountain top, he saw the sahib, sunk in a deep sleep, fall forward over the rock as if a hand had touched him.  He came down and searched for him, mem-sahib; but he was gone.  The snows are melting, and the water runs swift and deep.”

“Ah!” It was a gasp rather than an exclamation.  Stella was blindly tottering against the tent-rope, clutching vaguely for support.

The great Sikh caught her ere she fell, his own distress subdued in a flash before the urgency of her need.  “Lean on me, mem-sahib!” he said, deference and devotion mingling in his voice.