, and utterly
exhausted by his sufferings in his struggles to get back to face it out
like a man."

"Doctor, you are raving. His appearance was all compatible with a
struggle, fighting with the Boers--a prisoner bravely fighting for his
escape. Everything points to your fact? Nonsense, sir--absurd!"

"You're a brave, true-hearted fellow, Dickenson, my lad, and I like you
none the less for being so rude to me in your defence of your poor
friend. He must be sleeping now after the dose I gave him. Come with
me, and I'll give you a surprise."

"Not such a one as you have already given me, doctor," said the young
man bitterly.

"We shall see," said the doctor quietly; and the next minute he was
standing by Lennox's side, carefully lifting a moistened bandage laid
close to his neck.

Dickenson uttered a faint cry of horror. For deeply marked in his
friend's terribly swollen neck there was a deep blue mark such as would
have been caused by a tightened cord, and in places the skin was torn
away, leaving visible the eroded flesh.

"Oh doctor!" groaned Dickenson, trembling violently.

"Hold up, my dear boy," whispered his companion. "No one knows of it
but my orderly, you, and myself. It will soon heal up, and I shall not
feel it my duty to mention it to a soul."

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

THE TALE HE TOLD.

"Look here, Roby," said Dickenson, three or four days later, when,
having a little time on his hands--the Boers, consequent upon their late
defeat, having been very quiet--he went in to sit with the captain of
his company, finding him calm and composed, and ready to talk about the
injury to his head, which seemed to be healing fast.

"Precious lucky for me, Dickenson," he said; "an inch lower and there
would have been promotion for somebody. Narrow escape, wasn't it?"

"Awfully."

"Such a nuisance, too, lying up in this oven. I tell Emden that I
should get better much faster if he'd let me get up and go about; but he
will not listen."

"Of course not; you're best where you are. You couldn't wear your
helmet."

"My word, no! Head's awfully tender. It makes me frightfully wild
sometimes when I think of the cowardly way in which that cur Lennox--"

"Hold hard!" cried Dickenson, frowning. "Look here, Roby; you got that
crotchet into your head in the delirium that followed your wound.
You're getting better now and talk like a sane man, so just drop that
nonsense."

"Nonsense?"

"Yes; horrib