The Queen's Cup by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
page 75 of 402 (18%)
page 75 of 402 (18%)
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"I should have known you now, Lechmere," he said, as he came to his bedside. "Of course you are still greatly changed, but you are getting back your old expression, and I hope that in the course of two or three months you will be able to take your place in the ranks again." "I don't know, sir. I ain't fit to stay with the regiment, and have thought of being invalided home and then buying my discharge. I know you have said nothing as to how you got that wound, not even to the doctor; for if you had done so there is not a man in hospital who would have spoken to me. But how could I join the regiment again? knowing that if there was any suspicion of what I had done, every man would draw away from me, and that there would be nothing for me to do but to put a bullet in my head." "But no one ever will know it. It was a mad act, and I believe you were partly mad at the time." "I think so myself now that I look back. I think now that I must have been mad all along. It never once entered my mind to doubt that it was you, and now I see plainly enough that except what the man said about going away--and anyone might have said that--there was not a shadow of ground or suspicion against you. But even if I had never had that suspicion I should have left home. "Why, sir, I know that my own father and mother suspected that I killed her. I resented it at the time. I felt hard and bitter against it, but as I have been lying here I have come to see that I brought their suspicions upon myself by my own conduct, and that |
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