me to an
end. It was now a quarter to one. Harry Feversham had still a quarter of
an hour's furlough, and that quarter of an hour was occupied by a
retired surgeon-general with a great wagging beard, who sat nearly
opposite to the boy.

"I can tell you an incident still more curious," he said. "The man in
this case had never been under fire before, but he was of my own
profession. Life and death were part of his business. Nor was he really
in any particular danger. The affair happened during a hill campaign in
India. We were encamped in a valley, and a few Pathans used to lie out
on the hillside at night and take long shots into the camp. A bullet
ripped through the canvas of the hospital tent--that was all. The
surgeon crept out to his own quarters, and his orderly discovered him
half-an-hour afterward lying in his blood stone-dead."

"Hit?" exclaimed the major.

"Not a bit of it," said the surgeon. "He had quietly opened his
instrument-case in the dark, taken out a lancet, and severed his femoral
artery. Sheer panic, do you see, at the whistle of a bullet."

Even upon these men, case-hardened to horrors, the incident related in
its bald simplicity wrought its effect. From some there broke a
half-uttered exclamation of disbelief; others moved restlessly in their
chairs with a sort of physical discomfort, because a man had sunk so far
below humanity. Here an officer gulped his wine, there a second shook
his shoulders as though to shake the knowledge off as a dog shakes
water. There was only one in all that company who sat perfectly still in
the silence which followed upon the story. That one was the boy, Harry
Feversham.

He sat with his hands now clenched upon his knees and leaning forward a
little across the table toward the surgeon, his cheeks white as paper,
his eyes burning, and burning with ferocity. He had the look of a
dangerous animal in the trap. His body was gathered, his muscles taut.
Sutch had a fear that the lad meant to leap across the table and strike
with all his strength in the savagery of despair. He had indeed reached
out a restraining hand when General Feversham's matter-of-fact voice
intervened, and the boy's attitude suddenly relaxed.

"Queer incomprehensible things happen. Here are two of them. You can
only say they are the truth and pray God you may forget 'em. But you
can't explain, for you can't understand."

Sutch was moved to lay his hand upon Harry's shoulder.

"Can you?" he asked