that he had ever written a line of verse when at school. However,
when the winner was declared, there was his name again.

"I believe that it was the disgust I felt at his superiority to me
in everything that led me to ask my father to get me a commission
at once, for it seemed to me that I should never succeed in
anything if he were my rival. Since then our lives have been
altogether apart, although I have met him occasionally. Of course
we speak, for there has never been any quarrel between us since
that fight, but I know that he has never forgiven me, and I have a
sort of uneasy conviction that some day or other we shall come into
contact again.

"I am sure that if we meet again he will do me a bad turn if
possible. I regard him as being in some sort of way my evil genius.
I own that it is foolish and absurd, but I cannot get over the
feeling."

"Oh, it is absurd, Captain Mallett," the girl said. "He may have
beaten you in little things, but you won the Victoria Cross in the
Crimea, and everyone knows that you are one of the best shots in
the country, and that before you went away you were always in the
first flight with the hounds."

"Ah, you are an enthusiast, Bertha. I don't say that I cannot hold
my own with most men at a good many things where not brains, but
brute strength and a quick eye are the only requisites, but I am
quite convinced that if that fellow had been in the Redan that day,
he would have got the Victoria Cross, and I should not. There is no
doubt about his pluck, and if it had only been to put me in the