Jervase leaned over him in a momentary farewell, and Polson saw that the
old man's eyes were full of tears. One dropped plump and warm on the tip
of his own nose, and there was something comic and touching in the fact,
and he giggled and snuffled over it to the verge of a weak hysteria.

'I wasn't to disturb you, Polly,' said Jervase, 'and I'm misbehaving
myself. I've got to go, and you've got to go to sleep; but I'll be back
as soon as ever they'll let me, and in a day or two's time you'll be
strong enough for you and me to have a talk together.'

'I wish,' said the feeble, drawling voice from the neighbouring bed,
'that you would hold your tongue or go. I want to sleep.'

John Jervase stooped to kiss Polson on the forehead, and went his way
down the silent ward, with his boots creaking with a fainter and
fainter sound, until he reached the folding doors at the far end of the
dormitory.

The lad lay quiet. He had parted with his father in bitter disdain and
anger, but somehow these emotions had all departed from him by this
time, and had left him as if they had been an evil spirit, banished by
some better influence. He did not know--he was too weak and tired to
think about things--but at his side there was an angry stirring and a
peevish voice spoke to him.

'That's you, is it?'

Polson, a little strengthened by the food he had taken, managed to roll
round upon his shoulder, and looked his late enemy in the face.

'It's I,' he said. 'Indubitably. And it's you, to a certainty. Where did
you get hit?'

There was so long a silence that each thought that the other had fallen
asleep; but when it had endured for perhaps the space of twenty minutes,
De Blacquaire began to turn and murmur, and at last his words found an
articulate form.

'I say,' he began, 'you there! You! Sergeant! Are you awake?'

'Wide,' said Polson.

The man beside him lay with pallid face and big bird-like eyes, staring
at the smoked semi-circle on the ceiling, and after the inquiry he had
offered and the answer given, there was silence again, whilst a man
might have counted twenty.

'They've told me all about it,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'and I don't
understand it.

And I want to understand. What in the name of hell did you fetch me out
for?'

'You go to sleep,' said Polson, 'and don't ask ridiculous questions.'

'I want to know,' said De Blacquaire.

'I'll tell you to-morrow,' the Sergeant answered. 'But it's no good
thinking ab