Kind, Kind and Gentle Is She

“Kind, kind and gentle is she,

Kind is my Mary; 

The tender blossoms on the tree

Cannot compare wi’ Mary.”

LOVE!” said little Tripe Jones gloomily. “Of course I know
 wot love is. I’m bothered with it. I always ’ave been. It’s you great hulkin’ brutes as don’t know! You ain’t got the ’eart, not for all your size! Look at you!”

Jell Murphy, the big man sitting on the next cot, nodded soberly.

“I guess you’re right, Tripe,” he said slowly. “I never felt it that way, nohow; but I’d like mighty fine to. I used often to say a man hadn’t come proper alive until he’d gone and fallen in love, but it’s never come my way.”

“Garn!” said Tripe jealously. “There’s Maggie, the colonel’s wife’s maid, is proper struck on you. She won’t never give me a word, an’ me never stoppin’ thinkin’ about ’er.”

Jell Murphy shook his head. “That ain’t no use to me,” he said. “She don’t count with me. I ain’t said a word to make her like me, and she ain’t my sort. I want someone that’ll make me feel I’m going to do some blessed thing. Maggie’s a nice woman, but she’s not what I got in my thoughts, anyhow.”

“A bloomin’ princess you wants!” said Tripe Jones, sneering whimsically. “You got some neck on to you, you ’ave! Your idees ain’t no sorter use for a bloomin’ privit. Maybe you?d like to offer your ’and an’ ’eart to the colonel’s daughter. Give me Maggie. She’s a proper dandy.”

An orderly stuck his head in through the farthest doorway of the great, whitewashed barrack-room.

“Jell Murphy ’ere?” he shouted.

“Yes,” said the big man, rising, and reaching mechanically for his belt.

“Cap’n ’Arrison wants you up to his quarters immejit!” said the orderly, and departed.

Jell stood a moment, with a slight frown; then began to buckle his belt.

“I reck’n the cap’n is goin’ to offer you the charnst to be body servant to ’im!” said little Tripe Jones, grinning perversely up at his big comrade; for he knew Jell’s fiercely independent spirit. “You’ll be a gentleman’s gentleman then,” he added. “An’ the cap’n ’ll give you his old clo’es, an’ you’ll bloomin’ well ’ave to see there ain’t no creases in ’is best toonic! Ain’t you bloomin’ grieved we ain’t at ’ome, where a white man ’d stand a charnst of a fine job like that? That’s the worst of India.”

“Hell!” said Murphy; and walked out through the doorway, across the courtyard to where Captain Harrison had his quarters.

He found the captain standing on his balcony, talking to a peculiarly beautiful woman, whom he knew by sight—as did all the station—to be the Lady Mary Worthington, always spoken of as Lady Mary.

“You sent for me, sir,” said Jell Murphy, saluting.

“That you, Murphy?” said the captain. Come up on the verandah! I want you to oblige me in something, if you will.”

He turned to the lady:

“This is the man I was speaking to you about,” he said, as Jell stopped at the top of the steps. “If you can persuade Murphy to sing for you, I can guarantee your concert will be a success. He’s got easily the finest voice in the regiment.”

Lady Mary Worthington stared at Murphy with undisguised interest. She had only recently come up to the hill station, where she was paying a visit to the colonel and his wife, the latter being her sister. She had never seen the man before, but he was certainly worth the seeing, for a finer specimen of manhood she had never seen. Jell Murphy stood over six feet in height, and weighed nearly sixteen stone of shapely bone, muscle, and sinew, without an ounce of fat to spoil his clean symmetry. Moreover, he had rather a fine head and face; and he was very distinctly young, and in some ways was plainly a little unsophisticated.

Lady Mary, woman of more seasons than she was beginning to want to remember, was impressed, and smiled entrancingly as she spoke.

“Will you?” she asked. And Murphy’s big grey eyes grew bewildered as she looked into them. “Captain Harrison assures me that you have the best voice in the station,” she continued, still looking at him bewitchingly. “I want you on my programme. Now will you let me put your name down—some good old home-country song? All the songs are to be the old home-country songs. May I put you down, Mr. Murphy?”

Jell Murphy stirred slightly at the title, then nodded his dark head, clearing his throat nervously.

“Yes,” he said. “I should be proud to do anything to please you,” he ended simply. “When would you want me?” he added.

Lady Mary stuck a provoking forefinger under her lower lip, and pondered.

“I should like to try you over to-day, if possible,” she said. “How would half-past five do, if that will suit Captain Harrison?”—turning to the officer.

“Perfectly all right,” said the captain enthusiastically. “I’ll see that Murphy is free.”

“At five-thirty, then, up at the bungalow,” said the Lady Mary, bowing slightly to Jell. “I shall expect you, and we can settle your song then. Ask for me when you come Good-bye.”

Jell Murphy muttered something confusedly, saluted, and wheeled to the steps, which he stumbled down, though gracefully enough, as the lady noticed; for she was perfectly aware of the kind of impression she had made.

“A fine-looking man,” she remarked to Captain Harrison. “Now to get on with my list of names. What a pity you’ve no voice, Captain Harrison! I should have insisted on having a song from you. My sister will sing, ‘When other lips;’ and I suppose I must let that old frump, Mrs. Stanmey, put all our nerves on edge with her ‘Ben Bowling.’ Why can’t she sing something feminine? Then there’s Miss Tolfrey, and her brother, that young lieutenant. I’ve put them down,” etc., etc.

II

“What are your favourite songs?” asked Lady Mary, as she seated herself at the piano that evening.

“I’ve lots,” he said. “But there’s none of them I like as well as ‘Kathleen Mavourneen,’ and ‘Mary, My Mary.’ “

“They’re both of them love-songs, Mr. Murphy,” said Lady Mary, glancing up at him. “Somehow I shouldn’t have thought you cared for love-songs.”

Yet, really, she had guessed all the time that his taste would run that way. She had seen a good deal of men, and had readily perceived the possibilities that lay but a little way down in this big, rather earnest young man.

“I know plenty of barrack-room songs,” hastily said Jell, who had flushed a little at her remark. “Maybe you’d like one of them?”

“No,” said the woman, smiling down at the notes, so that he could not see her expression. “I think one of the two you mentioned will do very well. I like love-songs myself. Shall we try the Mavourneen one?”

She rippled out the prelude, and Murphy broke into the song, a little nervously; but his voice was magnificent, and tears of sheer ecstasy came into Lady Mary’s eyes. The song ended, and she let her fingers rest on the notes as she looked up at the man.

“You really have a splendid voice,” she said. “Shall we try the second one?”

By this time big Murphy had his voice in full control, and he let himself go; whilst the woman at the piano shivered a little, because of the beauty of the voice and the force of feeling that seemed to be behind the words. Jell was looking down at her head of bronze-gold hair as he sang, and she was perfectly aware of the fact. Probably it was her temperament which made her read more into his accentuation than ever he had any thought of putting there; though, possibly, he was stirred to an expression of vague feelings, that he had no intimate knowledge of at the time.

“Oh!” she said to herself several times, under her breath. “What a voice! What a voice!” But though it was truly a wonderful voice, the man’s clean vigour and unspoilt personality had also its effect in helping so to impress her. Somehow, she could not get rid of a feeling that there was something strange, something personal in the accentuation of the words of the song, yet nothing that held the least offence for her. If she felt aright, it was but one more tribute among, oh, so many to her fascination. Quite an absurd number had betrayed “symptoms” at the first meeting!

The song ended; but she did not look up at him. She had been stirred peculiarly; and she turned over the leaves of Murphy’s song-book until she had steadied. The beauty that has its primary effect on the emotions reached home to her quickly.

“You have really a splendid voice, Mr. Murphy,” she said, for the second time, “It is a real gift. If you were trained, nothing would stop you. I have troubled you enough for to-night, I think. I like the second song best”—she was aware that her choice had pleased the man in some vague way. “We must go through it together a few times before the concert.” She rose, and shook hands with him, feeling him quiver, as her firm hand gripped his enormously muscular one. “You must be tremendously strong,” she said, without any intention of speaking. Then, hastily: “ Good-night; so good of you to agree to sing for me.” And ushered him out.

“What on earth did I say that for?” she asked herself, half irritably, half amusedly, as she passed into the next room. “But I’m sure he is.”

III

“You’re mighty struck on your Lady Mary!” said little Tripe Jones, something like a fortnight later.

Tripe had put one or two details together with his accustomed acuteness. He had dug some unwillingly willing facts out of Jell by the aid of remorseless questions, and, for the rest, he had used his eyes and his ears.

“You’re always hummin’ an’ hummin’ that Mary song of yourn!” added Tripe. “You must be struck on the fine lady as is teachin’ you singin’ better ’n the Almighty knew ’ow!”

The big man, lying on the next cot in his shirt and trousers, stopped his soft humming, and turned his head towards where the little man lay.

“What’s that?” he said. “What d’you mean?”

“Well, you ain’t never done singin’ ‘Kind is your Mary,’ “ replied Tripe, almost pugnaciously. “An’ you go about lookin’ every blessed moment as if you was kissin’ saints in ’eaven—wimmin saints, I mean. I know the signs; and well I should, too. I’ve ’ad the experience, w’ich you ain’t; only I always ’ad the sense to bother with my own sort. An’ you can take it from me you has it good an’ hard, and the Lord help you, Mister Jell Murphy, privit; for there ain’t nothing in it but trouble. You’d ’a better took Maggie, an’ got spliced proper an’ settled—”

“Shut your mouth!” roared Jell, flinging himself up into a sitting position on his cot, his face alternately white with anger and red with shame that his secret was so thoroughly laid bare. “You’re talkin’ like a bloomin’ mad fool. An’, anyway, don’t you get using her name so handy, or there’ll be ructions between you and me!”

“Sorry, old pal,” said the little man, in a voice that was suddenly quiet. “I never meant no ’arm. All the same, if you’re feelin’ huffy, don’t make no mistake, I’m your man, gloves or fisties. Just say so plain out, that’s all, old friend.”

“That’s all right, Tripe,” said Murphy. “You got plenty of pluck. Only don’t talk like you been doin’. I’m kind of crotchy these last days, with the heat an’ not sleepin’.”

IV

The singing lessons were continued; for Lady Mary had suggested the possibility of a duet together, which was to be sprung on the audience quite as an extra. She had no definite intention of singing it when the time came, though, equally, she was quite capable of doing so, if still in the mood. Meanwhile, there was a piquancy about these little informal singing lessons with the great sapper.

“Have you ever been in love, Mr. Murphy?” she asked him at one of their lessons. “You sing like a lover, you know. So many men are hopelessly flat in a love song.”

“I’m in love now,” said Murphy, surprising himself with the unexpected words. But Lady Mary laughed musically down at the keyboard.

“How nice that sounds,” she said. “I like to find a man who’s not ashamed of being natural.”

She glanced up swiftly, just a flash of her eyes across his, and thrilled with the passion that glowed in him, all pent up, yet seeming on the point of leaping. She had never before fitted herself into quite so interesting a situation. The very restraint of so forceful a masculine as this big fighting man stirred her in a score of vague and hidden ways.

Abruptly, she remembered Captain Harrison. Undoubtedly she loved Tom Harrison; she had gone to the extent of admitting as much frankly to herself. Tom was just a “lovely fine man,” and she dwelt a moment on his memory, her fingers picking out odd harmonies. With the thought of Tom, she checked the tendency to lead the sapper any nearer to the snapping point of his restraint; and when next she glanced up at him it was with eyes that were speculative and almost cold.

“My sister tells me that Maggie, her maid, and you are very fond of each other.”

Murphy made a gigantic, dumb gesture of denial; but she continued, remorseless.

“I’m very glad,” she said quietly. “Maggie seems a thoroughly nice girl.” And then, as he would have disclaimed verbally so soon as the right words arranged themselves, she glanced at her watch and stood up. “I’m .afraid I must go now,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming!”

She held out her hand. As she did so, unfortunately, she allowed her glance to meet his, and felt herself sway mentally and physically to the dominant force of him. Before she knew what he was doing, he had knelt down on one knee and kissed her hand with all the strange reverence that a good man feels when love comes truly. Then, rising swiftly, he turned and walked out, without a word, leaving her standing, her heart thudding strangely, and the hand that he had kissed still held out loosely in front of her.

“Oh!” she said, almost “with a gasp, after nearly a minute of silence; and went quickly to her own room; for she wanted to analyse her sensations.

V

“Kind, kind and gentle is she—

Kind is my Mary…”

Tripe was coming up from the canteen that evening, when he caught the words of the song that he was growing to hate. A few moments later he met Murphy himself in a bend of the path, where three lonely sycamores made a kind of natural bower. It was plain to the little man that Jell had been walking up and down there by himself, thinking and singing, and, as Tripe would have put it, “generally carryin’ on damn silly!”

“There you are, singin’ that bloomin’ thing again!” said Tripe irritably.

He had received about his twentieth rebuff from Maggie that same evening, and had tried the canteen to ease his feelings. Thus, maybe, he was a little less careful of his words than he might have been.

“Why the ’ell,” he continued, “you make such a blimey fool of yourself, I carn’t think!” Then, with a sudden leaping up of all that was biggest in him: “You go along now an’ ’ave a sensible talk with Maggie. She’s pinin’ to see you, as well I know. An’ get that silly, high-falutin’ rubbige out of your ’ead, ’fore it drives you dotty! You don’t suppose she cares a brass tin-tack for you! Not if you went to ’ell this minnit! You take my tip—”

“Drop it, Tripe!” interrupted big Murphy. “You’re talkin’ out of your neck! I know what I’m doin’; don’t get me shirty! I’m like a blessed filed trigger, so leave me alone!”

Tripe looked a moment at his friend; then had the wisdom to go on without another word. Further up the path he met Maggie, looking very bonnie.

“‘Ee’s down there, Maggie,” he said. “Go an’ ’ave a talk to ’im.”

“I dassent!” said Maggie.

Yet for all that, she went; but when she got near enough to hear him singing, and to hear the steady tramp, tramp of his feet to and fro along the path ahead of her, she truly “dassent.” Instead, she cried a bit, and turned back to the station.

VI

Lady Mary told herself that she must put a stop to the practising for the concert. But when the usual time came, and Jell Murphy presented himself, he found her seated ready at the piano.

Murphy sang his song with a quality of voice and passion that brought strange tears into the woman’s eyes. She felt herself to be intensely moved; the man’s love was so real, and there was so much force of manhood at the back of all. And, also, he really did look splendid. Perhaps you follow her feelings.

Outside, behind one of the pillars of the verandah, Maggie, the maid, stood and cried as if her heart would break. The love in the man’s voice was so plain, and none of it was for her. Presently she could bear it no longer, and went away to the back of the bungalow, to her own quarters.

It was at the end of the practising that big Murphy did suddenly the thing that he had never dared even to think upon. He was singing the last line of the song, and looking down from his great height at the golden bronze of Lady Mary’s hair, when suddenly she looked up at him, her eyes wet and full of a thousand vague feelings and temporary abandon. The next moment big Murphy had her crushed in his arms, and was kissing her, at first madly, and then with an infinite tenderness that the woman appreciated with gentle thrills in every fibre.

Abruptly, a memory of Tom Harrison came into her mind, and she pushed Murphy away from her; for he loosed her the moment he saw her wish to be freed. Then, with a curious sound that was half a sob and half a gasp, she ran out of the room.

Big Jell Murphy stood, maybe, a couple of full minutes, with everything grey about him. Once or twice he swayed a little on his feet; then, realising that she was not coming back to him, he made rather blindly for the entrance, and away out on to one of the mountain paths, to be alone.

It was morning when he staggered back into the station, and it would have been the cells and shot-drill for him, only that his night’s exposure and the strain of his emotions had brought on a severe attack of his old plain fever, so that, instead of the cells, he was taken at once to hospital.

VII

“The ’Scurries is out on the bloomin’ rampage, an’ we’re a-going to give ’em their medicing!” said Tripe, who had been on guard, swinging his rifle down into the rack. “An’ poor old Jell’s out of it all in ’ospital!”

“Wotcher mean?” “Who said so?” “Rot!” “ ’Urray!” came a storm of cries from men in the barracks, as they rushed round little Tripe Jones.

“ ’Ands off!” shouted Tripe, at the top of his voice. “Keep yer ’ands off, or I’ll not tell yer nothink! I ’eard the colonel read the telegraft himself to the orficers. I stopped near the windy a minute, an’ I ’eard it all.” (Tripe was shameless!) “The hill devils is playin’ blessed murder out beyond the Candy-peel, an’ that’s twenty miles leggin’ for some of you great tallow-fat lads! You’ll sweat! I reck’n it’ll mean the ’ole bloomin’ regiment. There—I told yer so! There goes the alarm”— as the clear, sweet notes of a bugle sounded through the station.

Two hours later the regiment had gone, leaving Captain Harrison with a hundred and twenty men, a sergeant, and two corporals in charge of the station and hospital. The duty to stay had fallen to Tom Harrison, owing to his being on the disabled list with a badly wrenched shoulder. He cursed his luck, but was consoled by the fact of Lady Mary’s company.

Possibly Tom Harrison was a little too much taken up with the Lady Mary to attend properly to his duties, and maybe his temporary slackness had its effect upon the discontented sentries who were so hopelessly “out of the fun” there would be presently for the others beyond the “Candy peel,” as the regiment called the hump of foothills away to the north-west of the station. Whether Captain Tom Harrison was to blame does not matter now, for he wiped everything clean when the thing occurred. But about two o’clock, six hours after the regiment had marched out, just when everything was at its slackest, there came a harsh ripple of rifle-fire from the edge of the ravine which began about a hundred yards from the front of the station.

Three of the sentries went down, and then, before anyone had any conception of what it all meant, there came swarming up out of the ravine itself hundreds upon hundreds of big hillmen.

The station itself was rushed, and half the company cut to pieces, before Captain Harrison was out of the colonel’s bungalow. He jumped the verandah steps, firing his Colt as he jumped; and as he did so, there came the sharp ringing thud of a rifle volley from the windows of the barracks, where the sergeant had already rallied a score of the remaining men.

Six times the sergeant directed his fire into the horde of murdering hillmen, and then came the crack of a single rifle from the hospital. This was followed by the report of three other weapons; for Jell Murphy had got out of bed, in an old, ragged, hospital gown, and was firing from the window of the hospital, with the dispenser and two sick-duty men at his side, each with his rifle. But how they had got the rifles, in the circumstances, is a mystery.

It was this prompt action on the part of the sergeant and Jell that gave Tom Harrison his chance. He looked round quickly, and saw a number of his men, perhaps a round score, penned into the alleyway between the end of the barracks and the cookhouse. They appeared to be fighting with any odd weapon that they had managed to grasp; for one man was certainly swinging a pick, and he saw a heavy iron saucepan being used, evidently in deadly fashion; whilst another man fought with one of the cook’s cleavers.

Captain Tom Harrison did a thing then that the regiment never forgot. He charged straight into the thinnest portion of the surge of hillmen, firing as he charged; and they gave way. He came through, fifty seconds later, stabbed in half a dozen places, whirling a native chopping-knife in his usable hand, and the knife running blood to the hilt. His revolver had gone, so had almost every rag of clothing from his body. He dashed in under the rifles of the sergeant’s party, and mercifully was not shot to pieces. Then down the whole length of the barracks, to where the heavy end door opened opposite to the cookhouse; for it was through this door that the meals were brought in. As the captain had surmised, the door had been made fast on the inside, and the men outside were just penned up for slaughter in the most hopeless sort of cul-de-sac. As he raced for this door, there was a constant thudding against it with some heavy implement that sounded plain through the hideous native yelling and the shouting of his own men.

Captain Tom Harrison reached the door, gave a quick wrench, and had the great bar back. The door came open with a crash, and his men fell in over each other, dragging the dead and the wounded with them. The last man in was knifed clean through and through from behind by a huge pursuing native; but Captain Tom, naked and murderous, hauled the native in after his victim, and butchered him on the floor of the barracks; whilst the men closed the door, and ran for their rifles.

“The colonel’s bungalow!” shouted the captain, staggering up from the dead native. “Lady Mary—the women!” He headed out, naked, through the sergeant’s doorway, followed by a dozen of the men, with fixed bayonets. They made one clear charge right up to the bungalow, and found Jell Murphy there, guarding the women with a big sapper’s axe, but no rifle. They took up their post on the verandah, where, between the cross-fire from the barracks and their own, they drove every native out of the station front within ten minutes.

“Thank God!” muttered Tom Harrison, a little weakly, for he had bled a lot. A moment later: “Lord! I must get some more clothes on—” He never finished even the thought, for he heard the sergeant shouting:

“There’s about a thousand of ’em coming now, sir! Bring the wimmin over, sir. They’re almost ’ere, sir! Quick, sir!”

Captain Tom Harrison turned and raced into the bungalow; but the big sapper had been even quicker to grasp the sergeant’s warning; for the captain met him coming out, with Lady Mary held like a child in his arms; so that it was her sister, the colonel’s wife, that Tom Harrison carried, whilst one of his men would have done likewise with Maggie, the cook, only she told him she wanted no “mauling,” and could manage on her “own two legs” as well as he.

They reached the barracks safely, and as they did so there came a tremendous yelling without, and the square in front of the barracks became literally alive with hillmen, charging in huge, unwieldy mobs of them, and every second or third man of them seemed to be carrying a new Service rifle.

“By gad!” gasped the breathless captain, staring down from one of the barred windows of the barracks. “We’re done, sure. They’ve got Service rifles.”

“I’ve got it, sir!” almost shouted the sergeant. “I couldn’t make head or tail of what all them bloomin’ p’tarns was foolin’ round ’ere for. Them’s new smuggled-in German or Roosian rifles, same bore as the Service pattern—rotten made they is, too, sir. But the amminition’s gone astray somewhere or t’other; an’ that bloomin’ well explains them monkeyin’ in ’ere, like I never ’eard the likes of, not since the bad year. It ain’t their way. But they couldn’t stand ’aving them rifles and no bloomin’ amminition; an’ it’s all a plant to get the station amminition, so as they can play ’ell with them new playthings they got. I’ll bet there’s a lot of devilment to the back of this; an’ I’ll bet there ain’t no ructions out beyond the Candy-peel. It was just a trick to leave the station empty; an’ someone’s going to be hung for this, sir. Look out! Here they come!”

But the soldiers drove the hillmen back time after time during the next ten minutes; for their empty rifles were little better than so many clubs, whilst the remnants of the company shot swiftly and with comparative security from the shelter of the great barracks. At the end of some fifteen or sixteen minutes’ lighting, the enemy had ceased to charge up to the windows, and a sudden rush was made to the left.

“They’re on to the amminition-house, air!” shouted the sergeant; and clapped his rifle again to his shoulder. “Clear them from the door, boys!” he sung out. “If they once get in, we’re done. Fire low, and keep cool—”

“I’m out of cartridges, sergeant,” interrupted a man’s voice.

“Get one of the other chaps’ belts,” snarled the sergeant, without ceasing to cuddle the stock of his rifle to his chin. “There’s enough dead men’s belts to see us through, Gawd knows!”

“We’ve been usin’ them all along, sergeant,” said several voices. “We ain’t any of us got more than a few left.”

The sergeant ceased to cuddle his rifle, and looked round quickly, a sudden touch of added grimness in his eyes.

“Here,” he said, “ keep them devils from the ammunition-door while I take a look!”

He glanced at Captain Harrison as he spoke. And the captain, very white, pulled a dead man’s coat round his naked, bloodstained shoulders. He had already appropriated a pair of trousers from the same source, and, as his wounds had ceased to bleed, he managed to keep on the go.

“What are we to do, sir?” asked the sergeant, when they had searched the arm-stands afresh.

“We’ve got to cut through those beggars outside,” said Tom Harrison, “ and get a box of cartridges out of the ammunition-house.”

“It’s the only thing, sir,” said the sergeant, after thinking a moment. “But we won’t never do it. There’s a couple of thousand of them p’tarns outside—an’ there goes our last cartridge!” For as he was speaking the men had ceased firing.

The sortie was arranged. Captain Harrison picked out a dozen of the biggest and soundest men, and allowed Murphy to join them, though the big sapper’s eyes still burned dully with fever. The arrangement was that as soon as the door was opened they should charge through with fixed bayonets, whilst those left at once barred the door and held it for their return

Nothing was said to the three women, who had been put in a sergeant’s cubicle away up at the end of the big room. But Lady Mary must have perceived something of their intention, for suddenly she came running out with an inarticulate cry of supreme distress that made the big sapper take a quick step towards her with his arms open; but the next instant he remembered himself. And then the door was open, and they were making the attempt.

Captain Harrison was clubbed insensible on the very threshold, and dragged back by his feet into the barracks just before they got the door closed and fastened. And it was big Murphy who led the charge, swinging the great sapper’s axe with its four-foot haft and broad head. The weapon made a circle of steel and blood around him, and a couple of score big natives must have died under its swing before he stood in the little stone porch of the ammunition-house. But he stood there alone. The dozen men who had been at his back had died in a dozen different ways in that brief, mad charge.

Through all the big, seething square there came a curious silence, and then a kind of ferocious screaming, and a thousand big hill-men rushing on one spot. The big axe swung amid a hail of German rifle-butts, yet the huge sapper was untouched. The porch gave him just room for his weapon, and no more, and not one of the attackers could get in at his side or back. And presently even the hillmen tired of rushing in on that one little spot of certain death, and gave back a while to confer.

Meanwhile, up on the high roof of the barracks, the sergeant was manipulating a piece of broken looking-glass, part of a shaving mirror, and presently, from maybe half a dozen miles away to the north-west, through, the eternal mountain air, there flashed suddenly and burned the blink of an answering helio:

“Coming. Hold on. End.”

Twice more during the next half-hour the hillmen rushed Jell Murphy, and each time the big sapper built him a semicircle of dead round about the stone porch, though by the end of the second attack he was bleeding in a dozen places. After the hillmen had backed away for the second time, there fell a most extraordinary silence upon the square, broken only by a curious low rattling of rude castanets from a native “holy man,” who had begun to walk round and round the small ammunition-house on the stumps of his knees, rattling the little pieces of slate as he went.

“That shows as they think Jell Murphy’s got devils fightin’ with ’im,” said the sergeant, gravely. “Yon bleedin’ fakir is puttin’ a spell on to old Jell. He’ll go round like that for maybe a hour, an’ then them beggars ’ll rush ’im, an’ nothin’ ’ll stop ’em then. I guess old Murphy ’ll have to go. He’s shown hisself a fine lad.”

There came a low growl from the half-dozen men who still lived.

“We ain’t a-going to let ’im go cut like that, sergeant,” said one of them grimly. “We’re going out to fetch ’im in, or bloomin’ well kick it wiv ’im.”

“If you makes a move, boys,” said the sergeant, “ you’ll end ’im and us right off. If only yon chap ’ll keep foolin’ round long enough we’ll be safe, an’ Murphy too; the rigment ’ll be back then, an’ I want to live for that! You can go out then, boys, and kick it as quick as you like, only we has the wimmin now to think of.” .

“Sergeant,” called one of the younger men eagerly from across the barrack-room, “I’ve found some! My God, sergeant, there’s fifty bloomin’ rounds!”

The sergeant’s hands fairly trembled as he took the precious packets from the man.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, in tremulous earnestness, “ let me kill a man wiv each bloomin’ one!”

“Sst!” said one of the men suddenly. “Hark to old Jell. He’s singin’ summat.”

The men craned forward to stare and listen, and so great was the stillness upon the big square that they could clearly catch the words—(blending oddly with the rattling of the fakir’s castanets), that the big sapper was singing softly to himself as he stood leaning on the big axe.

“It’s yon Mary song of his, I’m think-in’,” said a Macdullarg, whose cot lay near Murphy’s. “It’s the fever in him, I doubt not; an’ him been practisin’ for the concert that was to be.”

Murphy continued to croon and sing to himself. And suddenly the Lady Mary, leaning over the bed, white-faced, where Tom Harrison lay, heard it, and shivered a little.

“Look out, boys!” said the sergeant abruptly. “Yon devil ’as finished, an’ now they’m going to rush old Murphy. Shoot slow, an’ send as many to hell as you can.”

The holy man shuffled away from his persistent rounding of the house, and in the same moment a tremendous yell filled the square as a rush was made. For a moment the men in the barracks saw Murphy clearly, from the waist upwards. Below the waist the semicircle of the dead hid him as a wall. Then the enemy were at the porch in a chaos of intended butchery, through which swung the great axe.

“Now!” said the sergeant; and six rifles were fired methodically.

They fired every cartridge they had, and eased some of the fury and deadliness out of the attack on the big sapper, for still the great axe swung.

“He’s done now!” said the sergeant, fingering his useless trigger. “An’ we carn’t do nothin’. My Gawd, what’s ’appening? He’s chargin’ them!”

It was true. They saw the gigantic form of the big sapper leap up suddenly into sight over the barrier of the dead, and hurl himself into the enormous mass of surging hillmen.

“He’d got to do it,” said one of the men, in a husky voice. “Hark to him! He’s singing again. Hark to him!”

They saw the gigantic sapper, head and shoulders bigger than any man in the square, driving through the heart of the natives, the big axe swinging and circling and dripping. And as he swung the great axe, in a voice that could be heard above all the roar of the fight they could hear him chanting a curious medley of words:

“Ha, ha! Gentle is she, 

Mary, my darling!”

And with each chanted word the four-foot axe swung and circled and struck—a dripping baton beating a melody of death.

“It’s the fever,” the sergeant kept muttering under his breath, yet without knowing that he said anything, as he stared so tensely with his men.

Still the big sapper went forward, and still across the square there came the strange “Ha, ha! Gentle is she, Mary, my darling!” and the eternal swing and circle of the great axe.

But inside the big barrack-room Lady Mary was not even aware of what was happening. She was holding Captain Harrison’s head against her breast, and crying tearlessly, for the young officer lay so everlastingly quiet that she began to feel sure he was dead. As for Maggie, mercifully she had stayed tending her mistress in the cubicle, and so knew nothing of the immediate happenings.

“They’ve stopped him!” said a man’s voice abruptly, dry and toneless. “He’s done! My God!”

They saw the great shoulders of big Murphy sink out of sight under a thousand rifle-butts; then he hove himself upright, and swung the great axe round once more, striking madly to right and left. There came just three shouted words:

“Ha, ha! Gentle—”

And he disappeared, finally, and the four-foot axe ceased to strike.

And so, as it seems to me, I see big-hearted, big-bodied Jell Murphy swinging, his axe of victory, and stepping great and fine and wholesome and unafraid out of that pasture of death into the Pastures of the Eternal, still singing in his spirit the words that held for his particular soul no single trace of irony:

“Ha, ha! Gentle is she, 

Mary, my darling!”

* * *

It was just upon the evening as Jell Murphy died, and, almost as if it had been the fitting signal of so momentous a dying, there came the crash of a thousand Service rifles. The regiment had returned.

Little Tripe Jones it was who got first to where his big comrade had died. With ferocious energy, and sobbing brutal oaths out of his throat, he attacked the great circle of dead hillmen that lay all around that last stand. Body after body he swung clear by main strength until a score of his comrades were working only a shade less furiously to the same end. And so at last they had him clear. As they lifted him an undersized Cockney voiced his epitaph, standing there in the midst of that quiet but infinitely eloquent circle of the dead: “My word!” said the little man, in an awed voice, “him was sure a bloody man!”

* * *

Three months later Lady Mary married Captain Harrison.

At breakfast, a few mornings after the wedding, Captain Harrison remarked:

“I see the men still keep Murphy’s grave covered with flowers.”

“I’m glad of that,” replied Lady Mary. “He deserved it. Is your coffee right, dear?”