ght me no relief, but on the contrary,
as the years pass over my head my physical strength decreases and my
nerves become less able to bear up against the continual strain.

"I am a broken man in mind and body. I live in a state of tension,
always straining my ears for the hated sound, afraid to converse with
my fellows for fear of exposing my dreadful condition to them, with
no comfort or hope of comfort on this side of the grave. I should be
willing. Heaven knows, to die, and yet as each 5th of October comes
round, I am prostrated with fear because I do not know what strange and
terrible experience may be in store for me.

"Forty years have passed since I slew Ghoolab Shah, and forty times
I have gone through all the horrors of death, without attaining the
blessed peace which lies beyond.

"I have no means of knowing in what shape my fate will come upon me. I
have immured myself in this lonely country, and surrounded myself with
barriers, because in my weaker moments my instincts urge me to take some
steps for self-protection, but I know well in my heart how futile it
all is. They must come quickly now, for I grow old, and Nature will
forestall them unless they make haste.

"I take credit to myself that I have kept my hands off the prussic-acid
or opium bottle. It has always been in my power to checkmate my occult
persecutors in that way, but I have ever held that a man in this world
cannot desert his post until he has been relieved in due course by the
authorities. I have had no scruples, however, about exposing myself to
danger, and, during the Sikh and Sepoy wars, I did all that a man could
do to court Death. He passed me by, however, and picked out many a young
fellow to whom life was only opening and who had everything to live for,
while I survived to win crosses and honours which had lost all relish
for me.

"Well, well, these things cannot depend upon chance, and there is no
doubt some deep reason for it all.

"One compensation Providence has made me in the shape of a true and
faithful wife, to whom I told my dreadful secret before the wedding, and
who nobly consented to share my lot. She has lifted half the burden from
my shoulders, but with the effect, poor soul, of crushing her own life
beneath its weight!

"My children, too, have been a comfort to me. Mordaunt knows all, or
nearly all. Gabriel we have endeavoured to keep in the dark, though we
cannot prevent her from knowing that there is something