e
all permanently shelved upon the world's half-pay list as it is. The
obituary column is just the last formality which gazettes us out of the
service altogether," and Sutch stretched out and eased his crippled leg,
which fourteen years ago that day had been crushed and twisted in the
fall of a scaling-ladder.

"I am glad that you came before the others," continued Feversham. "I
would like to take your opinion. This day is more to me than the
anniversary of our attack upon the Redan. At the very moment when we
were standing under arms in the dark--"

"To the west of the quarries; I remember," interrupted Sutch, with a
deep breath. "How should one forget?"

"At that very moment Harry was born in this house. I thought, therefore,
that if you did not object, he might join us to-night. He happens to be
at home. He will, of course, enter the service, and he might learn
something, perhaps, which afterward will be of use--one never knows."

"By all means," said Sutch, with alacrity. For since his visits to
General Feversham were limited to the occasion of these anniversary
dinners, he had never yet seen Harry Feversham.

Sutch had for many years been puzzled as to the qualities in General
Feversham which had attracted Muriel Graham, a woman as remarkable for
the refinement of her intellect as for the beauty of her person; and he
could never find an explanation. He had to be content with his knowledge
that for some mysterious reason she had married this man so much older
than herself and so unlike to her in character. Personal courage and an
indomitable self-confidence were the chief, indeed the only, qualities
which sprang to light in General Feversham. Lieutenant Sutch went back
in thought over twenty years, as he sat on his garden-chair, to a time
before he had taken part, as an officer of the Naval Brigade, in that
unsuccessful onslaught on the Redan. He remembered a season in London
to which he had come fresh from the China station; and he was curious to
see Harry Feversham. He did not admit that it was more than the natural
curiosity of a man who, disabled in comparative youth, had made a hobby
out of the study of human nature. He was interested to see whether the
lad took after his mother or his father--that was all.

So that night Harry Feversham took a place at the dinner-table and
listened to the stories which his elders told, while Lieutenant Sutch
watched him. The stories were all of that dark winter in the Cr