instant, and without pain, if one could believe the smile upon his lips.

The Major and I were raising his head in the hope that some flutter of
life might remain, when I heard a well-remembered voice at my side, and
there was de Lissac leaning upon his elbow among a litter of dead
guardsmen. He had a great blue coat muffled round him, and the hat with
the high red plume was lying on the ground beside him. He was very
pale, and had dark blotches under his eyes, but otherwise he was as he
had ever been, with the keen, hungry nose, the wiry moustache, and the
close-cropped head thinning away to baldness upon the top. His eyelids
had always drooped, but now one could hardly see the glint of his eyes
from beneath them.

"Hola, Jock!" he cried. "I didn't thought to have seen you here, and
yet I might have known it, too, when I saw friend Jim."

"It is you that has brought all this trouble," said I.

"Ta, ta, ta!" he cried, in his old impatient fashion. "It is all
arranged for us. When I was in Spain I learned to believe in Fate.
It is Fate which has sent you here this morning."

"This man's blood lies at your door," said I, with my hand on poor Jim's
shoulder.

"And mine on his, so we have paid our debts."

He flung open his mantle as he spoke, and I saw with horror that a great
black lump of clotted blood was hanging out of his side.