A silver bearded dignitary welcomed them here on the Khan's behalf, and in half an hour, refreshed with tea and a meal, every one forgot the cares and troubles of the journey; they slept on piles of felts and silken quilts before the great fires that blazed in the smooth grey-plastered chimney-places set in the angles of the rooms. Next day they rode to their reception by the Khan. The stodgy longgowned citizens broke out into smiles of welcome as their outriders pressed a way for them through the crowded streets.

They had no eyes for the tiled and arched exterior of the palace, embowered in poplars, but were filled with the expectation of the meeting.

The three officers came into a small unostentatious room, whose floors and walls were nearly hidden by carpets. It impressed them well to see that nothing was gaudy or striking, yet those rugs must have been worth many a camelload of gold.

The Khan was slightly taller and older than his kinsman: his personality and the welcome that his eyes proclaimed before his lips spoke it gripped them all. They were surely in the hands of a true ally.

This was only the first of many hospitable receptions; but before the day was out the subaltern had declared his mission to the Khan, had made over the rifles, and had care

secret book.

The Khan was quick to understand the new plan, and to rejoice at his share in it. There was no doubt that the share would be loyally and heartily carried into action.

He congratulated all the subaltern's following personally on their escape from the perils of the journey, and saw to it that everything was done for the men's comfort.

On the second day, robes of honour arrived, flaming in stripes and blazes of silk of Samarkhara, and a bag of ancient silver, Greek and Persian, as much as two men could lift. This was for the rank and file, and the subaltern had much ado to combine a polite message of thanks for the gorgeous raiment with a courteous intimation that the men of his corps could not accept money for doing their duty.

He longed, though, for one or two of those old staters stamped with the Greek superscriptions of Punjabi kings.

It was no great matter to send back for the four armchests they had jettisoned in the sand; and when the party had recovered their strength, the time came to tackle the second half of their journey, to the Ataman of Irtysh.

The Khan and his venerable ministers, with their courtly Asian grace, seemed as sorry at their departure as they felt themselves to go, after all too brief a stay in the city whose

very name had seemed legendary in the tales of their childhood. The second caravan was far smaller and more manageable, and it was well that it was to be so. Twenty of the great Bactrian camels, whose hair had now lengthened with the approach of winter, till it changed the very aspect of the beasts, were enough to carry their wants. Only three of these carried their kits and a couple of small felt tents;

The Khan himself and several score of his troopers marched out with them for a dozen miles of the first march. They were now hardened to the toils of the desert, and march followed march almost automatically. It was hard indeed to remember for how many days they had travelled, and the subaltern found that he must cut notches in a stick.

This track differed from the last in that it had been used in ancient times, indeed, for many centuries. Few had travelled by it, however, for a generation, since the coming of the railway, far to the south, which had diverted its commerce.

The signs of this were seen in the ruined lining of wells and the tumbled remains of travellers' shelters and shrines, that were often mere tiny heaps of thin flat bricks of the ancient sort, with here and there the glint of a blue Persian tile.

As they progressed, marching

the balance were loaded with grain, meal, and the water gear necessary for the long journey that would cross the famine steppe.

The subaltern hoped to be able to send back ten of the camels from a well-known water-pool at about half-way. Whilst they rested in Khorazm, a small caravan had been sent five marches out to make a dump of barley, to ease matters for the main party.

a trifle south of east, the sanddunes became fewer and less toilsome, the browny - yellow herbage more frequent, and the wells deeper.

By the time a dozen notches had appeared in the subaltern's stick, they were using their long raw hide rope to draw up water. A few more and they had to lower half a camel load of it four hundred feet, a great leathern sack knotted to the end, its mouth held open with a stick. Then the camel would be led away from the great gaping mouth, the upper end of the rope fast to his saddle, and slowly, and with infinite care, the precious bag of water would be hauled up as the beast walked on. It took nearly half an hour to accomplish this, anxious hands saving the rope from chafe or cut at the well's lip.

The deeper wells, to their astonishment, they found lined and revetted with the bones of camels, neatly set together.

In fact, even in the first dozen marches they began to find a litter of bones along the faint trail. As the days went on this

this gradually thickened into two continuous lines, one on either hand, with here and there the bones of a man amongst the countless skeletons of camels and horses.

They spoke little to each other during those long changeless marches, as they rode they rode slowly with the camels, day in and day out. Perhaps any possible remark had long since been uttered: still Xenia, like the marvel she was, kept some cheering little saying ready every day as they sat down to a bowl of tea after settling into the night's camp.

The eighteenth march was marked by a snowstorm, which came on at midday. Iwwaz Bai, the old retainer, whom the Khan had sent to show the trail, was hard put to it to guide them to the well. The last of the party got in at midnight, exhausted and sore from battling with the shrieking wind, and the lash of the driven snow. Several men were frost-bitten, but by heroic rubbing with snow, so that they screamed with agony, no fingers or toes were lost. By great good-fortune a couple of old brick walls stood at this spot to the height of a man's shoulder, saving much blast of the blizzard from them.

Next day too was remarkable. The track was overlaid with new snow, but the wise old Iwwaz Bai overcame doubts

of the way, guiding them in a manner that was almost uncanny.

When they reached it, the well was of the prodigious depth of over seven hundred feet, as they paced it out along the track of the water - drawing camel. Fortunately it was safe from being frozen over, but it must be imagined with what anxious care every available length of their rope was pieced together, with what ever greater care was it hauled up foot by foot, a man's hand interposed whenever it might rub on a stone. The life of every man depended upon that somewhat scrubby-looking piece of hide. Did they lose much of it by a breakage they might not be able to reach the water in some well ahead. There was hardly any fuel to be found at that bivouac; otherwise they might have melted some snow instead of risking their precious rope.

Then the weather changed for the better, and gave them a spell of comparative and even unseasonable warmth. The snow vanished in day, and they marched over rolling steppes of autumn-tinted herbage. This had not the even colouring of our English downs, but formed a crazy patchwork of rich browns and yellows, streaked with every sort of green, brightened with tiny wild flowers of every hue, and cut up by grey pebbly ravines. Even the weird, unnatural, gnarled saxaul seemed to take on a more kindly aspect.

So far all had gone well.

The men were thin, really thin, once again, but hard-trained to the last ounce, and tanned by snow and sun to the ruddy tint of an autumn beech. Water had always been sufficient both for man and beast; they had achieved warmth in nearly every bivouac; only food had to be cut down to a low margin. The horses, thanks to the grazing, were surprisingly fit. The grass of the steppes is a wonderful thing. The native horse can be marched without grain, and worked hard almost indefinitely, provided he gets time for a few hours' nibble every day. It is this fact that made possible the invasions of Attila. Quite early one morning they sighted a speck on the horizon. This, old Iwwaz Bai announced, indicated the railway that they were due to cross. It was a water-tower alongside a lonely station. Perhaps in the old sailing-ship days the vision of the peak of Teneriffe or of Ascension would cause the same interest and excitement that this spectacle afforded our little party.

It took hours of marching before it seemed, in that clear air, to get any closer, and then it appeared wise to the subaltern to alter the direction of march so as to pass well out of sight of it.

Not only that, but he decided to halt till dark in a little fold of ground some three miles from the railway itself. They would then march on and cross it without risking being

seen from some chance train. This was, in fact, the immense stretch of line that ran from Beshkent to Moscow, along which two army corps had flowed swiftly northwards in August 1914. Far to the north of where they stood, a force of Cossacks bestrode it, fighting the Reds of Beshkent, denying them communication with the central Soviet. In four hours it was safe to move forward, and that interval the subaltern spent in making ready and putting the final touches on a couple of demolition charges out of four dozen they had with them. The line carried supplies and reinforcements to the Red army of the north.

They could see the light of the station well away to their left, as they crossed the little embankment that carried the single rusted line of rails, from which fully a half of the sleepers were amissing. It was dark, but the stars were enough to show Iwwaz Bai the way, and a half-moon sufficient to place the two charges of gun-cotton. Half an hour was enough for this and to brush over their own tracks, towing some bundles of scrub-grass behind the last camel, and to the subaltern's joy the ground rose gently beyond the railway, so that with any luck there would be no high ground between it and their bivouac for that night. So it fell out they could still see the station light, perhaps six or seven miles away to the west as they settled

that rent them.

As luck would have it, at nearly midnight, as they were about to turn in to sleep, the sentry saw a crimson gleam where they had left their charges. Several seconds afterwards a dull thud came to them, hardly louder than the noise of a drumming hare's foot.

So far so good. The station lights seemed to increase soon after, and there was little doubt that the first charge had detonated successfully. The subaltern had placed it beneath the junction of two rails, so as to spoil both rails and the fish-plate.

He left orders with the sentry to wake him in three hours' time. The second charge was of great interest. He dreamed of tulips.

Whilst it was still dark, the sentry roused him out of his sheepskins. He looked at his watch. It was a sorry thing to lose that sleep, but the satisfaction was worth it. He roused Rokhalski and Xenia.

They gazed towards the west, turning every now and then to their watches with impatient curses, both at the slow feet

After thirty-five slow minutes had passed there came a quick, bright, rosy light in the sky, glowing up over the swell of the earth. Then came a real thud many times louder than the first. They hugged each other with joy as several more flashes and thuds followed. That second charge was designed by an artist at his calling. It had been originally the subaltern's idea to have a second charge, which should explode under the line at about fifty yards from the spot at which the passing of a truck would detonate the first.

He and the artist in guncotton calculated that from three to four hours was a fair time for the wreckage of the leading truck to be cleared from the line. It had to be anticipated that the leading truck, with an especial eye to this matter of mines, would be empty.

That artist had devised a neat thing in exploders to be set in action by the detonation of the first charge, and which would function between three and four hours after. He had beautified it by a device which ensured that the first charge would do its work only after a train had first passed over number two.

This is not the place for technicalities, but it may be whispered that a small but simple thermo-electric couple, a pellet of sal-ammoniac, and another activity of electro