“You had bad news?”
“Yes. And yet hardly in the sense of what people understand by bad news. But it was something of an extremely vexatious and worrying nature, and likely to cause me no end of unpleasantness.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, in a tone which invited further confidence. It decided him. He would tell her.
A high ridge rose between them and the camp. This they were the while ascending by a rough road leading to the kotal by which it was crossed. Now, from the other side of this, there boomed forth a long, low, rattling thunder roll.
“Hallo! The storm is a great deal nearer than I thought,” he exclaimed, looking up. “We must hurry on, Miss Clive. I don’t want you to get caught in the thick of it.”
No time for confidences was this, he decided. All women were afraid of thunder and lightning, though all would not admit it. What, then, would be the use of consulting this one on a delicate and highly unpleasant matter what time her thoughts would be running on how quickly at the earliest they could reach the camp?
Another peal rolled forth, dull and distant, tailing off into a sort of staccato rapping rattle.
“Well, these mountains do give out the most extraordinary thing in echoes I ever struck,” he said. “Or else that’s about the strangest peal of thunder I ever heard.”
A clinking sound behind caused both to turn. Mehrab Khan, who, with the other sowar, had been some way behind, was galloping to overtake them, and that at a pace which is hardly put on in ascending such an acclivity unless under weighty necessity. But even before he could come up with them, the dark figure of a horseman appeared on the kotal above, and came flying down the rough and stony road. They made him out to be another of the Levy Sowars.
The pace was too great, or the rider too weak. He was flung off, almost at their very feet—a terrible sight, covered with blood and dust. With a word to Hilda Clive to wait where she was, Raynier and Mehrab Khan went forward to examine the man.