it. He sighed.

"Yes," he said. "It's the first and only time I knew the dear old dad
commit a serious error of judgment, and heavily he's paid for it. By
the way, the double funeral came off here--and was hugely attended. All
the world seemed to have rolled up. Do you know, Kenrick, I can hardly
stick it on the farm now. You've no idea what it's like without him."

He broke off. And then for some minutes we two grown men were simply
not able to speak.

"It's a fortunate thing Beryl did not succeed in shooting that villain
Kuliso," he said at last. "Not that he didn't richly deserve it, but--I
don't like to think what the result might have been. The law is a very
hard-and-fast customer to deal with."

"Yes. I pointed that out to her at the time. But what could I do?"

"Nothing--simply nothing. If I had been there I might have done very
much the same sort of thing as she did."

"What's this? Our patient seems to have taken a jump forward," said
Pentridge, entering at that moment. "Not been making him talk a lot,
have you, Brian?"

"No fear. I've been doing all the talking," was the answer. "Only
telling him about things."

"Let me congratulate you, Holt, on the abnormal thickness of your
skull," laughed Pentridge. "Otherwise a shattered egg-shell would have
been the word instead of a tidy bout of brain fever, not to mention a
well-delivered assegai jab beneath the fifth rib."

"You seem to have patched me up, though, to some purpose," I said. And
after a few cheery remarks he left me, with a parting injunction to
Brian not to let me talk.

But after that I made no more "jumps forward." On the contrary, I was
going back. I grew listless and seemed to feel no interest in anything,
and my prevailing thought was that it was a pity I had returned to life
at all. I even expostulated with Beryl for her attention to me.
Pentridge was puzzled.

"I can't make it out at all," I overheard him say one day during a
whispered conversation with Beryl. "We ought to have had him on his
legs again by now; but he seems determined to cheat me, and that in the
wrong direction. Has he anything on his mind, do you know, Miss
Matterson?"

"Well, in point of fact, I think he has," she answered with some
hesitation. "Of a business nature, he gave me to understand. Of
course, I am telling you this in strict confidence, and only then
because it might be a guide to you in the treatment of his case."

"Ah! No