"Your ladyship and miss, I hope I am not tedious nor wandering from the
point. It will be sufficient to say that when I got down to Chinapore I
found that M. Platzoff had indeed been there, but only just long enough
to see the Colonel and give him an account of Captain Chillington's
death, after which he had at once engaged a palanquin and bearers and
set out with all speed for Bombay. It was now my turn to see the
Colonel, and after I had given over into his hands all my dead master's
property that I had brought with me from the Hills, I told him the story
of the diamond as Rung had told it to me. He was much struck by it, and
ordered me to take Rung to him the next morning. But that very night
Rung disappeared, and was never seen in the camp again. Whether he was
frightened at what he called the Russian's evil eye--frightened that
Platzoff could blight him even from a distance, I have no means of
knowing. In any case, gone he was; and from that day to this I have
never set eyes on him. Well, the Colonel said he would take a note of
what I had told him about the diamond, and that I must leave the matter
entirely in his hands.

"Your ladyship, a fortnight after that the Colonel shot himself.

"To make short a long story--we got a fresh Colonel, and were removed to
another part of the country; and there, a few weeks later, I was
knocked down by fever, and was a long time before I thoroughly recovered
my strength. A year or two later our regiment was ordered back to
England, but a day or two before we should have sailed I had a letter
telling me that my old sweetheart was dead. This news seemed to take all
care for life out of me, and on the spur of the moment I volunteered
into a regiment bound for China, in which country war was just breaking
out. There, and at other places abroad, I stopped till just four months
ago, when I was finally discharged, with my pension, and a bullet in my