d the muffled words of a chorus--

For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fellow,
And so say all of us,

and believed the guests upon this Crimean night were drinking his
father's health. He turned over in his bed and lay shivering. He saw in
his mind a broken officer slinking at night in the shadows of the London
streets. He pushed back the flap of a tent and stooped over a man lying
stone-dead in his blood, with an open lancet clinched in his right hand.
And he saw that the face of the broken officer and the face of the dead
surgeon were one--and that one face, the face of Harry Feversham.

CHAPTER II

CAPTAIN TRENCH AND A TELEGRAM

Thirteen years later, and in the same month of June, Harry Feversham's
health was drunk again, but after a quieter fashion and in a smaller
company. The company was gathered in a room high up in a shapeless block
of buildings which frowns like a fortress above Westminster. A stranger
crossing St. James's Park southwards, over the suspension bridge, at
night, who chanced to lift his eyes and see suddenly the tiers of
lighted windows towering above him to so precipitous a height, might be
brought to a stop with the fancy that here in the heart of London was a
mountain and the gnomes at work. Upon the tenth floor of this building
Harry had taken a flat during his year's furlough from his regiment in
India; and it was in the dining room of this flat that the simple
ceremony took place. The room was furnished in a dark and restful
fashion; and since the chill of the weather belied the calendar, a
comfortable fire blazed in the hearth. A bay window, over which the
blinds had not been lowered, commanded London.

There were four men smoking about the dinner-table. Harry Feversham was
unchanged, except for a fair moustache, which contrasted with his dark
hair, and the natural consequences of growth. He was now a man of
middle height, long-limbed, and well-knit like an athlete, but his
features had not altered since that night when they had been so closely
scrutinised by Lieutenant Sutch. Of his companions two were
brother-officers on leave in England, like himself, whom he had that
afternoon picked up at his club,--Captain Trench, a small man, growing
bald, with a small, sharp, resourceful face and black eyes of a
remarkable activity, and Lieutenant Willoughby, an officer of quite a
different stamp. A round forehead, a thi