General Harford, with guides, Sikhs, Goorkhas, came down like a hurricane from the south-east, cut off a great body of tribesmen from their fellows, and drove them headlong, with deadly force, upon the defences they had striven so furiously to take.

The defenders sallied out to meet them with fixed bayonets.  The brief siege, if siege it could be called, was over.

In the early light Derrick found himself fighting, fighting furiously, sword to sword.  And the terrible joy of the conflict ran in his blood like fire.

“Ah!” he gasped.  “It’s good!  It’s good!”

And then he found another fighting beside him—­a mighty fighting man, grim, terrible, silent.  They thrust together; they withdrew together; they charged together.

Once an enemy seized Derrick’s sword and he found himself vainly struggling against the awful, wild-faced fanatic’s sinewy grasp.  He saw the man’s upraised arm, and knew with horrible certainty that he was helpless, helpless.

Then there shot out a swift, rescuing hand.  A straight and deadly blow was struck.  And Derrick, flinging a laugh over his shoulder, beheld a man dressed as a tribesman fall headlong over his enemy’s body, struck to the earth by another swordsman.

Like lightning there flashed through his brain the memory of a man who had saved his life more than a year before on this same tumultuous Frontier—­a man in tribesman’s dress, with blue eyes of a strange, keen friendliness.  He had it now.  This was the Secret Service man.  Derrick planted himself squarely over the prostrate body, and there stood while the fight surged on about him to the deadly and inevitable end.

XI

THE SECRET OUT

“All Carlyon’s doing!” General Harford said a little later.  “He has pulled the strings throughout, from their very midst.  Carlyon the ubiquitous, Carlyon the silent, Carlyon the watchful!  He has averted a horrible catastrophe.  The Indian Government must be made to understand that he is a servant worth having.  They say he personally led the tribesmen to their death.  They certainly walked very willingly into the trap arranged for them.  Now, where is Carlyon?”

No one knew.  In the plain outside the camp wounded men were being collected.  The General was relieved to hear that Carlyon was not among them.  He sat down to make his report, a highly eulogistic report, of this man’s splendid services.  And then he went to late breakfast at the club-house.

In the evening Averil rode back to the station with an escort.  The terrible traces of the struggle were not wholly removed.  They rode round by a longer route to avoid the sight.

Seddon was the first of her friends who saw her.  He was standing inside the mess-house.  He went hurriedly forward and gave her brief details of the fight.  Then, while they were talking, Derrick himself came running up.  He greeted her with less of his boyish effusion than was customary.