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“Colonel Carlyon!” she said, and on the impulse of the moment she gave him both her hands.

His quiet voice answered her out of the strange folds. “Come into the garden a moment!” he said.

She went with him unquestioning, with the confidence of a child. He led her with silent, stealthy tread into the deepest gloom the compound afforded. Then he stopped and faced her with a question that sent a sudden tumult of doubt racing through her brain.

“Will you take a message to Fort Akbar for me, Averil?” he said. “A matter of life and death.”

A message! Averil’s heart stood suddenly-still. All the evil report that she had heard of this man raised its head like a serpent roused from slumber, a serpent that had hidden in her breast, and a terrible agony of fear took the place of her confidence.

Carlyon waited for her answer without a sign of impatience. Through her mind, as it were on wheels of fire, Steele’s passionate words were running: “He lives on treachery. He would betray any one or all of us to death if it were to the interest of the Empire that we should be sacrificed.” And again: “I would sooner tread barefoot on a scorpion than get entangled in Carlyon’s web.”

All this she would once have dismissed as vilest calumny. But Carlyon’s abandonment of Derrick, and his subsequent explanation thereof, were terribly overwhelming evidence against him. And now this man, this spy, wanted to use her as an instrument to accomplish some secret end of his.

A matter of life or death, he said. And for which of these did he purpose to use her efforts? Averil sickened at the possibilities the question raised in her mind. And still Carlyon waited for her answer.

“Why do you ask me?” she said at last, in a quivering whisper. “What is the message you want to send?”

“You delivered a message for me only yesterday without a single question,” he said.

She wrung her hands together in the darkness. “I know. I know,” she said; “but then I did not realize.”

“You saved the camp from destruction,” he went on. “Will you not do the same to-night?”

“How shall I know?” she sobbed in anguish.

“What have they been telling you?”

The quiet voice came in strange contrast to the agitated uncertainty of her tones. Carlyon laid steady hands on her shoulders. In the dim light his eyes had leapt to blue flame, sudden, intense. She hid her face from their searching; ashamed, horrified at her own doubts–yet still doubting.

“Your friendship has stood a heavier strain than this,” Carlyon said, with grave reproach.

But she could not answer him. She dared scarcely face her own thoughts privately, much less utter them to him.

What if he were urging the tribes to rise to give the Government a pretext for war? She had heard him say that peace had come too soon, that war alone could remedy the evil of constantly recurring outrages along that troublous Frontier.

What if he counted the lives of a few women and their gallant protectors as but a little price to pay for the accomplishment of this end?

What if he purposed to make this awful sacrifice in the interests of the Empire, and only asked this thing of her because no other would undertake it?

She lifted her face. He was still looking at her with those strange, burning eyes that seemed to pierce her very soul.

“Averil,” he said, “you may do a great thing for the Empire to-night–if you will.”

The Empire! Ah, what fearful things would he not do behind that mask! Yet she stood silent, bound by the spell of his presence.

Carlyon went on. “There is going to be a rising, but we shall hold our own, I hope without loss. You can ride a horse, and I can trust you. This message must be delivered to-night. There is not an officer at liberty. I would not send one if there were. Every man will be wanted. Averil, will you go for me?”