And is she not right? What am I, after all, that I should expect any human being to give up everything for _me_? Broken-down, old, worn-out, if not in body, at least utterly out-wearied and used-up in mind, why should I cumber the earth? Gaston, my boy, you have played out your part--you have got to the end of your tether--’tis time for the curtain to drop--’tis time to lie down and go to sleep--there is not much to regret here--you have seen everything this dull world has to show. Now for ‘fresh fields and pastures new’--at all events the waking will be glorious excitement--to find out the grand secret at last--where will it be, and how? I might know in ten minutes--many an old friend is there now--not badly off for company at any rate--there was poor Harry, the night before we were engaged at Chillianwallah he thought he was _there_. How well I remember him, as he told me his dream just before we went into action! He thought he was disembodied--floating, floating away through the blue night sky--hovering over the sea--bathing in the moonlight--flitting amongst the stars, and ever he got lighter and lighter, and ever he rose higher and higher, till he reached a cool, quiet garden, without a breeze or a sound, and there he saw his mother walking, as he remembered her before she died, when he was yet a child. And she placed her hand upon his brow, and the thin transparent hand clove through him--for he, too, was a spirit--till it struck chill like ice around his heart, and he awoke. Poor Harry, I saw him go down with a musket-shot through his temples; and he knows all about it, too, now. Pain! the pain is nothing. A dislocated ankle is far more acute agony than it would take to kill an elephant--’tis but a touch to a trigger, and the thing’s done.” D’Orville got up coolly, and calmly walked across the room, took a certain oblong mahogany box from under his writing-table, and quietly unlocking it, drew his hand along the smooth, shining barrel of a pistol. He examined it well, pricked the touch-hole, shook the powder well up into the nipple, and then, having wiped the weapon almost caressingly, laid it down on the table at his elbow, and pursued his reflections, more at ease now that he had prepared everything for his escape.