en the same with us all, and the heat has made it very trying. I
am particularly anxious to get the wounded well out of the place,
for now that the excitement is over I expect an outbreak of fever
or dysentery.

"There, that is your man in the corner bed over there."

Mallett went over to the bedside, and looked at the wounded man.
His face was drawn and pinched, his eyes sunken in his head, his
face deadly pale, and his hair matted with perspiration.

"Do you know me, Captain Mallett?"

"No, lad, I cannot say that I do, though when the doctor told me
your name it seemed familiar to me. Very likely I should have
recognised you if I had met you a week since, but, you see, we are
both altered a good deal from the effect of our wounds."

"I am the son of Farmer Lechmere, your tenant."

"Good heavens! man. You don't mean to say you are Lechmere's eldest
son, George! What in the world brought you to this?"

"You did," the man said, sternly. "Your villainy brought me here."

Frank Mallett gave a start of astonishment that cost him so violent
a twinge in his wound that he almost cried out with sudden pain.

"What wild idea have you got into your head, my poor fellow?" he
said soothingly. "I am conscious of having done no wrong to you or
yours. I saw your father and mother on the afternoon before I came
away. They made no complaint of anything."

"No, they were contented enough. Do you know, Captain Mallett, that
I loved Martha Bennett?"

"No. I have been so little at home of recent years that I know very
little of the private affairs of my tenants, but I remember her, of
course, and I was grieved to learn by a letter from Sir John
Greendale the other day that in some strange way she was missing."

"Who knew that better than yourself?" the man said, raising himself
on his elbow, and fixing a look of such deadly hatred upon Mallett,
that the latter involuntarily drew back a step.

"I saw you laughing and talking to her in front of her father's
house. I heard you with her in their garden the evening before you
left and she disappeared, and it was my voice you heard in the
lane. Had I known that you were going that night, I would have
followed you and killed you, and saved her. The next morning you
were both gone. I waited a time and then went to the depot of your
regiment and enlisted. I had failed to save her, but at least I
could avenge her. That bullet was mine, and had you not stumbled
over a Pandy's body, I s