n of the _Rampagious_. Fancy selling one's country
and risking one's neck for four measly pounds sterling! If he had got
four thousand, I should have had some respect for him. His home is in
a wretched state, and his wife--a pretty woman, though almost a
skeleton, and a very nicely mannered, honest woman--says that her
husband unexpectedly gave her four pounds a month ago. He had kept
none of the blood money for drink! Curious, isn't it?"

"It shows that the man had some good in him. It shows that he was
ashamed to use the money upon himself. We must do something for the
poor wife, Dawson."

"She will easily get work, and she will be far better without her sot
of a husband. She did not cry when I told her everything. 'I ought to
have left him long ago,' she said, 'but I tried to save him. Thank God
we have no children,' That seemed to be her most insistent thought,
for she repeated it over and over again. 'Thank God that we have no
children.'"

"I hope that you were gentle with her, Dawson," said I, deeply moved.
Long ago the wife had come to me and pleaded for her husband. She had
shed no tear; she had admitted the justice, the necessity, of my
sentence. "Can you not give him another chance?" she had asked. "No,"
I had answered sadly. "He has exhausted all the chances." When she had
risen to go and I had pressed her hand, she had said, still dry-eyed,
"You are right, sir, it is no use, no use at all. Thank God that we
have no children."

"I hope that you were gentle with her, Dawson," I repeated.

He astonished me by the suddenness of his explosion. "Damn," roared
he--"damn and blast! Do you think that I am a brute. Gentle! It was as
much as I could do not to kiss the woman, as your little daughter
kissed me, and to promise that I would get her husband off somehow.
But I should not be a friend to her if I tried to save that man."

So Dawson had soft spots in his armour of callousness, and little
Jane's instinct was far surer than mine. She had taken to him at
sight. When I tried to get from her why, why he had so marked an
attraction for her, her replies baffled me more than the central fact.
"I love Colonel Dawson. He is a nice man. He has a little girl like
me. Her name is Clara. Her birthday is next month. I shall save up my
pocket money and send Clara a present. I like Colonel Dawson better
even than dear Bailey." I tore my hair, for "Bailey" is a wholly
imaginary friend of little Jane, whom I invented one e