"Who knew that better than yourself?" the man said, raising himself
on his elbow, and fixing a look of such deadly hatred upon Mallett,
that the latter involuntarily drew back a step.

"I saw you laughing and talking to her in front of her father's
house. I heard you with her in their garden the evening before you
left and she disappeared, and it was my voice you heard in the
lane. Had I known that you were going that night, I would have
followed you and killed you, and saved her. The next morning you
were both gone. I waited a time and then went to the depot of your
regiment and enlisted. I had failed to save her, but at least I
could avenge her. That bullet was mine, and had you not stumbled
over a Pandy's body, I suppose, just as I pulled my trigger, you
would have been a dead man.

"I did not know that I had failed, and, rushing forward with my
company, was in the thickest of the fight. I wanted to be killed,
but no shot struck me, and at last, when chasing a Pandy along a
passage in the Kaiser Bagh, he turned and levelled his piece at me.
Mine was loaded, and I could have shot him down as he turned, but I
stood and let him have his shot. When I found myself here I was
sorry that he had not finished me at once, but when I heard that
you were alive, and likely to recover, I thanked him in my heart
that he had left me a few more days of life, that I could let you
know that it was I who had fired, and that Martha's wrong had not
been wholly unavenged."

He sank back exhausted on to the pillow. Frank Mallett had made no
attempt to interrupt him: the sudden agony of his wound and his