"H'm: well it's bad enough," Dr. Tredgold replied, busy with his bandaging. NIGHT THE TWENTY-FIFTH. THE PAYING OF THE SCORE. Next evening, my leave being up, I returned to Aldershot. Dr. Tredgold had called around early, and after overhauling his patient and dressing the hand, had assured me there was no cause for anxiety. The fever had gone down, and this allowed us to tackle the main mischief, which was malnutrition. In short, Jack was starving. "Your man makes an excellent nurse," said the doctor. "I'll tell him to go slow at first, with beef-tea and milk, and to-morrow he can start the works up with a dose of champagne. But I'll drop in to-morrow, to make sure. The wound?--Oh, it's a dog-bite, safe enough, and a rather badly lacerated one. But we cauterised it in time last night, and it shows no 'anger,' as the saying is. Has he told you how he came by it?" "No," said I. "He has been lying in this lethargy ever since you left him. He wakes up and takes his medicine from Jephson, and then drops back into a doze. I thought it best not to worry him." "Quite right, too. . . . And I'll not ask questions, either, beyond putting it that he's a friend of yours, gone under, and you're playing the Samaritan. . . . Well, you can go back to duty, and Jephson and I will see this through. It's queer, too. . . . I seem to have seen his face somewhere. . . . But what's queerer is that he isn't dead. He must have had some practice at fasting, poor fellow. I should say that his stomach hadn't known food for a week." I duly 'phoned the doctor's report to Constantia. To Jephson my last words were, "Write daily. When Dr. Foe can sit out, dress him in any old suit, shirt, and underwear. I don't see myself out of this khaki for a long time ahead. He will be fit again long before Monday week, when you're to join up: and when he is able to walk, there's an envelope for him in the top right-hand drawer of my writing-table." Jephson wrote twice to report that Dr. Foe was "going on favourably," and on the third day, that he had even dressed himself and taken a walk. He had been away four hours and more--"which caused me much anxiety," added Jephson. But on the fourth day, on the eve of our starting for Rouen, I got the following letter, in Jack's own handwriting: "My dear Roddy,--I shall use the old name, since it is the last time I shall address you; and you, starting for France, will have no time to reach me and say that it is forbidden. "I have killed Farrell. It was a stupid and a sorry ending. At the last it was even quite brutal--bestially different from anything I had imagined--and I had imagined many ways--while I had control of the show.