for goodness' sake!"

"I must, my lad, because I think--mind you, I say I think--"

"Doctor, if you begin to think Drew Lennox is a coward I'll never
respect you again," cried Dickenson angrily.

"I don't think he's a coward, my dear boy," said the doctor, laying his
hand upon the young officer's arm. "I think he's as brave a lad as ever
stepped, and I like him; but no man is perfect, and the result of that
horrible plunge into the bowels of the earth shook him so that in that
fierce fight he grew for a bit very weak indeed."

"Impossible, doctor!" cried the young man fiercely.

"Quite possible," said the doctor, pressing his companion's arm; "and
now let me finish. I tell you, I like Drew Lennox, and if I am right I
shall think none the less of him."

"_Ur-r-r-r_!" growled Dickenson.

"It is between ourselves, mind, and it is only my theory. He lost his
nerve in the middle of that fight--had a fit of panic, and, as Roby and
the corporal say (very cruelly and bitterly), ran for his life--bolted."

"I'll never believe it, sir."

"Well, remain a heretic if you like; but that's my theory."

"I tell you, sir--"

"Wait a minute, my lad; I haven't done. I suggest that he had this
seizure--"

"And I swear he had not!"

"Wait till I've finished, boy," said the doctor sternly.

Dickenson stood with his brow knit and his fists clenched, almost
writhing in his anger; and the doctor went on:

"I suggest, my dear boy, that he had this fit of panic and was aware
that it must be known, when, after running right away--"

"Yes, sir; go on," said Dickenson savagely--"after running away--"

"He came quite to himself, felt that he would be branded as a coward by
all who knew him, and then, in a mad fit of despair--"

"Yes, sir--and then?"

"You told me that he came back without his revolver."

"Yes, sir," said Dickenson mockingly--"and then he didn't blow his
brains out."

"No," said the doctor quietly, "for he had lost his pistol, perhaps in
the fight; but it seems to me, Dickenson, that in his agony of shame,
despair, and madness, he tried to hang himself."

"Tried to do what?" roared Dickenson.

"What I say, my dear boy," said the doctor gravely.

"I say, doctor, have you been too much in the sun?" said Dickenson, with
a forced laugh, one which sounded painful in the extreme.

"No, my dear fellow; I am perfectly calm, and everything points to the
fact--his state when you found him, sorrowful, repentant