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“But why don’t we do anything?” asked Penelope, wondering at his impassioned tone, and little dreaming of the sinister influence which the wicked city of Gamara was to exercise over her own life.

“Because we are too lazy, too meek, too much afraid of responsibility—anything! Old Harry—I beg your pardon—Sir Henry Lennox would do it. I heard him say so once to the troops at a review—that he would like nothing better than to conquer Central Asia at their head, plundering all the way to Gamara. He got pulled up for it, of course. He isn’t exempt from official recognition of that kind any more than meaner people, though I really think I am particularly unfortunate. Just now I am in trouble with Church as well as State. I was so ill-advised as to write to a bishop about sending missionaries here.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” said Penelope. “Colin—my brother—is so disappointed that you haven’t asked for any.”

“Ah, but wait. I want to pick the men. To let the wrong man loose up here would be to destroy all my hopes for the frontier. There’s a fellow at the Cape named Livingstone—the man who made a long waggon-journey a year or two ago to look for some great lake the natives talked of, but found nothing, and means to try again—if I could get him I should be happy. He’s a doctor—physics the people as well as preaches to them, you see, and that’s the kind of Christianity that appeals to untutored savages like his flock and mine. Well, I asked the bishop if he could send us up a man like that, and his chaplain answered that I was evidently not aware that the Church’s care was for men’s souls, not their bodies. I wrote back that the Church must be very different from her Master if that was the case; and the answer came that in consequence of the unbecoming tone of my last communication, his lordship must decline any further correspondence with me. But that’s nothing. When I have fought for months to bring some exploit of the regiment’s to the notice of the authorities, and got an official commendation at last, I have had to insert in regimental orders a scathing rebuke of the insubordinate and unsuitable letters from me which had extorted it. But why am I telling you all this? It must have bored you horribly.”