er its various fleshpots. For the
sake of one old woman he made reckless and gallant sacrifice. When he
was bored to misery he came round to me. I learned later that in
visiting Wellingsford he faced more than boredom. All of this you must
put to the credit side of his ledger.

There he stood, his great broad shoulders and bull-neck silhouetted
against the window. That broad expanse, a bit fleshy, below the base of
the skull indicates brutality. Never before, to my eyes, had the sign
asserted itself with so much aggression. I had often wondered why,
apart from the Vilboek Farm legend, I had always disliked and
distrusted him. Now I seemed to know. It was the neck not of a man, but
of a brute. The curious repulsion of the previous evening, when he had
carried me into the house, came over me again. From junction of arm and
body protruded six inches of the steel-covered life-preserver, the
washleather that hid its ghastly knob staring at me blankly. I hated
the thing. The gallant English officer--and in my time I have known and
loved a many of the most gallant--does not go about in private life
fondling a trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the
trait of a savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck
correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a
shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the tail of
my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars, while my rugged
old Marigold, in a businesslike, old-soldier sort of way, without
thought of danger or death, was swaying at the head of the runaway
horse.

Presently he turned, and his brows were set above unfathomable hard
eyes. The short-cropped moustache could not hide the curious twitch of
the lips which I had seen once before. It was obvious that these few
minutes of silence had been spent in deep thought and had resulted in a
decision. A different being from the gay, successful soldier who had
come in to announce his honours confronted me. He threw down cap and
stick and passed his hand over his crisp brown hair.

"I don't know whether you're a friend of mine or not," he said, hands
on hips and gaitered legs slightly apart. "I've never been able to make
out. All through our intercourse, in spite of your courtesy and
hospitality, there has been some sort of reservation on your part."

"If that is so," said I, diplomatically, "it is because of the defects
of my national quality."

"That's possibly w