By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can be presumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are few who keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds to their work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds and tried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heath lived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in was smooth and unstirred by restless tossing inside the mosquito net.

The Rev. Francis was out, sitting by the bed of a dying parishioner.  He watched the long hours through, dressed as he had been in the afternoon, in a grey flannel suit, his thin neck too long and too spare for his all-around collar, and as he watched sometimes and sometimes prayed, he too felt the pressure of the night.

The woman he prayed beside was dying and quite unconscious of his presence.  Now and then, to relieve the strain, he got up and stood by the window, looking at the lights against the sky and thinking very definitely of something that troubled him and drew his lips into a tight, thin line.  He was a young man of the type described usually as “zealous” and “earnest,” and a light that was almost the light of fanaticism shone in his eyes.  A dying parishioner was no more of a novelty to Mr. Heath, than one of Mrs. Wilder’s dinner-parties was to her guests, and yet the woman on the bed appealed to his pity as few others had done in his experience.

When the doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched the hand on the quilt.  He was in evening dress, and he explained that he had been detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.

“Where is Rydal himself?”

He asked the question carelessly, dropping the pulseless wrist.

“Who can tell?” said the Rev. Francis Heath.

“He’d better keep out of the way,” continued the doctor.  “I believe there’s a police warrant out for him.  Hartley spoke of it to-night.  She will be gone before morning, and a good job for her.”

The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the 30th, and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that boomed and crashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.

II

TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE REV.  FRANCIS HEATH

Half-way up a low hill rise on the far side of the Mangadone Cantonment was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police.  It was a tidy, well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things himself and who was well served by competent servants.  Hartley had reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of build and entirely sensible and practical of mind.  He was spoken of as “sound” and “capable,” for it is thus we describe men with a word, and his mind was adjusted so as to give room for only one idea at a time.  He was convinced that he was tactful to a fault, nothing had ever shaken him in this belief, and his personal courage was the courage of the British lion.  Hartley was popular and on friendly and confidential terms with everybody.