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“Look there!” cried Lady Haigh suddenly. “What’s that?”

She pointed with her whip to the desert on the right of the town. A cloud of dust, followed by another somewhat smaller, seemed to be leaving the neighbourhood of the fort and the huts at a tremendous pace, crossing the route of the travellers at right angles.

“I think it must be one man chasing another,” suggested Penelope, whose eyes had by this time become accustomed to the huge dust-clouds raised by even a single horseman.

“Not quite, Miss Ross,” said Dr Tarleton, with a grim chuckle. “That’s the Chief taking his constitutional, with his orderly trying to keep up with him. There!”—as a patch of harder ground made a break in the cloud of dust—“you can see him now. Look there, though! something is wrong. He’s riding without any cap or helmet, and that means things are very contrary indeed. It would kill any other man, but he can stand it in these moods, though I got him to promise not to run such risks. Look out!”

He checked his horse sharply, for the two riders came thundering across the path, evidently without seeing those who were so near them—Major Keeling with his hair blowing out on the wind and his face distorted with anger, the orderly urging his pony to its utmost speed to keep up with the Commandant’s great black horse.