'Wauchope held some special appointment at home, and his regiment had been in Malta for several months before he joined them after the Ashanti war. He had been severely wounded in that war. A leaden slug, fired by one of the savages hidden among the branches of trees, entered his breast, and it was a marvel he was not killed on the spot. He told me he bled like an ox. His account of {56} how the blood at last stopped was somewhat curious. His old colonel, Sir John M'Leod, came to see him after he was wounded, and on leaving he presented him with a copy of the Book of Psalms. Wauchope said that he began wondering whether "old Jack," as he familiarly called his commanding officer, whom he greatly venerated, was in the habit of carrying about copies of the Psalms in his pocket to give to officers when dangerously wounded, and it struck him in such a ludicrous light that, after the good colonel was out of sight, he burst into such a fit of laughing that he could not stop--and that, he said stopped the bleeding! Sir John and Wauchope had a great respect for each other. Wauchope looked up to Sir John with admiration bordering on awe. The colonel regarded his lieutenant as a model officer. He told me that Wauchope's character commanded universal respect, and that his high moral tone and the thoroughness with which he discharged all his duties gave him an influence which was invaluable. 'On his arrival in Malta he was appointed musketry Instructor at Pembroke Camp. The men's shooting did not come up to the standard which it was thought it ought to reach; and one day Sir John said to me: "Wauchope is making himself perfectly ill with his anxiety about it. If he would only be anxious twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four I would not mind so much, but he is anxious all the twenty-four hours of the day!" 'At that time, however, Wauchope was anxious not only about his professional duties, but he was concerned about himself, for he knew that his life was a most precarious one, scarcely worth a day's purchase. The slug which pierced his chest had not been extracted. It kept moving about, and at any moment might cause death. {57} This he knew full well. He consulted the best surgeons in the island, but they were unable to do anything. It was not, I believe, till about a year afterwards that the slug was at last extracted by an Edinburgh surgeon. [Sidenote: The drawn sword]