The square moved on a short distance to ground less encumbered with the
slain, and then halted. The carnage was awful; dead and dying of the
enemy lay in heaps where they had fallen, mown down by the deadly fire
of the Martinis; while among them on the knoll where the square had
been broken, and in many cases hardly recognizable from the blood and
dust which covered their forms and faces, were the bodies of the
Englishmen who had perished in the fray.

Orders were now given for burying the dead, collecting the arms and
ammunition, and destroying the useless weapons that lay scattered about
in all directions; and it was while engaged in this latter duty that
Jack encountered his cousin.

"I've just been inquiring for you. Thank God, you're safe!"

In spite of all that he had just passed through, Jack's thoughts were
not fixed upon the fighting or dearly-won victory.

"O Val!" he blurted out, "I've found that watch--the one that was
stolen at Brenlands!"

In a few hurried sentences he described the conversation he had
overheard, and the discovery of the timepiece in the dead lieutenant's
pocket. The dread scene around him was for the moment forgotten in his
anxiety to clear his character from the doubts which he imagined must
still be entertained to a certain extent by his former friend.

"So you see, sir," he concluded, "I can now prove that I'm no thief.
Raymond Fosberton stole it. I wish you'd ask Captain Hamling to show
it to you, sir, and then you'd know I'm speaking the truth."

Valentine listened to this extraordinary revelation in open-eyed
astonishment.

"There's no need for that," he answered--"I'll ask to see it if it's
your particular wish--but, Jack, I wish you would believe that what I
say is true, and that neither I nor Queen Mab ever for a moment
imagined that you were the thief. You may doubt us, but we have never
lost faith in you."

CHAPTER XIX.

"FOOD FOR POWDER."

"And so he lay quite still, while the shot rattled through the rushes,
and gun after gun was fired over him."--_The Ugly Duckling_.

At last the wells were reached, and after the wants of the wounded had
been supplied, Jack and his comrades got a chance of quenching their
parching thirst.

Water! It was a moving sight--a crowd of men standing round a pit, at
the bottom of which appeared a little puddle, which when emptied out
would gradually drain in again, the spectators watching its progress
with greedy eyes.