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“I am going,” she said, in a clear, strong voice, “to the colonel. He will help me to save my husband.”

And with that she turned to the veranda, and met the commanding-officer face to face. There was another man behind him, but she did not look at him. She instantly, without a second’s pause, addressed the colonel.

“I was coming to you,” she said through her white lips. “You will help me. You must help me. My husband is a prisoner, and I am going into the Hills to find him. You must follow with men and guns. He must be saved–whatever it costs.”

The colonel laid his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her very earnestly, very kindly.

“My dear Mrs. Tudor,” he said, “all that can be done shall be done, all that is humanly possible. I have already told Turner so. Did you know that he was safe?”

He drew her forward a step, and she saw that the man behind him was Phil Turner himself–Phil Turner, grave, strong, resolute, with all his manhood strung up to the moment’s emergency, all his boyhood submerged in a responsibility that overwhelmed the lesser part of him, leaving only that which was great.

He went straight up to Audrey and took the hands she stretched out to him. Neither of them felt the presence of onlookers.

“He saved my life, Mrs. Tudor!” he said simply. “He forced me to take it at his hands. But I’m going back with some men to find him. You stay here with Mrs. Raleigh till we come back. We shall be quicker alone.”

A great sob burst from Audrey. It was as if the few gallant words had loosened the awful constriction at her heart.

“Oh, Phil, Phil!” she cried brokenly. “You understand–what this is to me–how I love him–how I love him! Bring him back to me! Promise, Phil, promise!”

And Phil bent till his lips touched the hands he held.

“I will do it,” he said with reverence–“so help me, God!”

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN’S AGONY

All through the day and the night that followed Audrey watched and waited.

She spent the terrible hours at the Raleighs’ bungalow, scarcely conscious of her surroundings in her anguish of suspense. It possessed her like a raging fever, and she could not rest. At times it almost seemed to suffocate her, and then she would pace to and fro, to and fro, hardly knowing what she did.

Mrs. Raleigh never left her, caring for her with a maternal tenderness that never flagged. But for her Audrey would almost certainly have collapsed under the strain.

“If he had only known! If he had only known!” she kept repeating. “But how could he know? for I never showed him. How could he even guess? And now he never can know. It’s too late, too late!”

Futile, bitter regret! All through the night it followed her, and when morning came the haggard misery it had wrought upon her face had robbed it of all its youth.

Mrs. Raleigh tried to comfort her with hopeful words, but she did not seem so much as to hear them. She was listening, listening intently, for every sound.

It was about noon that young Travers raced in, hot and breathless, but he stopped short in evident dismay when he saw Audrey. He would have withdrawn as precipitately as he had entered, but she sprang after him and caught him by the arms.

“You have news!” she cried wildly. “What is it? Oh, what is it? Tell me quickly!”

He hesitated and glanced nervously at Mrs. Raleigh.

“Yes, tell her,” the latter said. “It is better than suspense.”

And so briefly, jerkily, the boy blurted on his news:

“Phil’s back again; but they haven’t got the major. The fort was deserted, except for one old man, and they have brought him along. They are over at the colonel’s bungalow now.”

He paused, shocked by the awful look his tidings had brought into Audrey’s eyes.