d known what
was coming when it came. I was dumbfounded.

The accursed hound had followed us that evening to Captain Bellingham's
tent, and his undoubted cleverness in his own profession of spy had
done the rest.

"And now you'd better let me go," said the master of the situation, as
I for one could not help regarding him.

"I'll see you damned," said Raffles, savagely.

"Then you're damned and done for yourself, my cocky criminal. Raffles
the burglar! Raffles the society thief! Not dead after all, but
'live and 'listed. Send him home and give him fourteen years, and
won't he like 'em, that's all!"

"I shall have the pleasure of hearing you shot first," retorted
Raffles, through his teeth, "and that alone will make them bearable.
Come on, Bunny, let's drive the swine along and get it over."

And drive him we did, he cursing, cajoling, struggling, gloating, and
blubbering by turns. But Raffles never wavered for an instant, though
his face was tragic, and it went to my heart, where that look stays
still. I remember at the time, though I never let my hold relax, there
was a moment when I added my entreaties to those of our prisoner.
Raffles did not even reply to me. But I was thinking of him, I swear.
I was thinking of that gray set face that I never saw before or after.

"Your story will be tested," said the commanding officer, when Connal
had been marched to the guard-tent. "Is there any truth in his?"

"It is perfectly true, sir."

"And the notorious Raffles has been alive all these years, and you are
really he?"

"I am, sir."

"And what are you doing at the front?"

Somehow I thought that Raffles was going to smile, but the grim set of
his mouth never altered, neither was there any change in the ashy
pallor which had come over him in the donga when Connal mouthed his
name. It was only his eyes that lighted up at the last question.

"I am fighting, sir," said he, as simply as any subaltern in the army.

The commanding officer inclined a grizzled head perceptibly, and no
more. He was not one of any school, our General; he had his own ways,
and we loved both him and them; and I believe that he loved the rough
but gallant corps that bore his name. He once told us that he knew
something about most of us, and there were things that Raffles had done
of which he must have heard. But he only moved his grizzled head.

"Did you know he was going to give you away?" he asked at length, with
a je