, had he not himself
witnessed Hilary's gallant and daring deed, during the battle fought a
couple of days ago?

His presence there with the scouts instead of as an ordinary trooper in
the column, he owed to his relative, the latter having specially asked
that he should be allowed to accompany him in such capacity. Blachland
at that juncture, with his up-to-date knowledge of the country and the
natives, was far too useful a man not to stretch a point for, and
Percival West, although new to that part, was accustomed to sport and
outdoor life at home, and brimful of pluck and energy, and now, in the
short time he had been out, had thoroughly adapted himself to the life,
and the vicissitudes of the campaign.

To the cause of their being up here together Hilary never alluded, but
he noted with quiet satisfaction that the cure in the case of his young
cousin seemed complete. Once the latter volunteered a statement to that
effect.

"Ah, yes," he had replied. "Nothing like a life of this sort for
knocking any nonsense of that kind out of a fellow--" mentally adding,
somewhat grimly, "When he's young."

For Hilary Blachland himself did not find the busy and dangerous, and at
times exciting, work of the campaign by any means such an unfailing
panacea as he preached it to his younger relative. With it all there
was plenty of time for thought, for retrospect. What an empty and
useless thing he had made of life, and now the best part of it was all
behind him--now that it had been brought home to him that there was a
best part, now that it was too late. He was familiar with the axiom
that those who sell themselves to the devil seldom obtain their price,
and had often scoffed at it: for one thing because he did not believe in
the devil at all. Yet now, looking back, he had come to recognise that,
in substance at least, the axiom was a true one.

Yes, the better part of his life was now behind him, with its ideals,
its possibilities, its finer impulses. Carrying his bitter introspect
within the physical domain, had he not become rough and weather-beaten
and lined and seamed and puckered? It did not strike him as odd that he
should be indulging in such analysis at all--yet had he let anybody
else, say any of his present comrades, into the fact that he was doing
so, they would have deemed him mad, for if there was a man with that
expedition who was envied by most of his said comrades as the embodiment
of cool, sound darin