The sound which had aroused me was repeated close to the open window, and it was a sharp hissing drawing in of the breath, as of one in pain; and directly after the _syce_ who had crossed over to my side of the square, passed my window, halting slightly, and with a strange expression on his face, which impressed me even then. As I watched him it passed away, and he drew himself up, walking as usual, and salaaming to some one approaching in the opposite direction, and Major Lacey and Captain Brace sauntered by, while I lay thinking about the syce's expression, and the patient way in which he had hidden the pain from which he was suffering. I had recognised him, too, as the tall, handsome native who had been struck by Barton--a man who, ever since, had saluted me with a grave, gentle smile. "It's too bad," I was saying to myself; and then, in my listless weariness, I was dropping off to sleep again, as I generally did after a hard drill, when my black servant entered silently, and presented me with a little packet. "What is it?" I said lazily. "No know, sahib. Ny Deen bring, and say tell master dhoby man keep it and couldn't get back." I opened the packet, which smelt most fragrantly, and found first some white flowers, and beneath them, very carefully washed, ironed, and scented, a pocket-handkerchief. "Mine," I said half wonderingly, and then I grasped what it meant. "Did that syce, Lieutenant Barton's man, bring this just now?" "Yes, sahib. Ny Deen." "That will do," I said; and I lay back thinking of the morning when I saw the man come out of Barton's quarters bleeding, and bound up the cut. "A set of black scoundrels, are they," I said to myself. "Well, some of them have feeling, and a way of showing their gratitude." I took up and smelt the fragrant white blossoms thoughtfully; and then I remember saying to myself, for those events were stamped pretty deeply in my memory-- "An Englishman would never have dreamed of sending flowers like that. I dare say it means something, if one only knew." A few days after, when I had almost forgotten the incident, save that I always politely returned Ny Deen's salute when I passed him, I was returning to my quarters one evening, when--not at all an uncommon thing--I heard loud voices in front, and saw that three of our men were going unsteadily along, evidently after too long a stay at one of the wretched places where they were supplied with the poisonous arrack which was answerable for the miserable death of so many British soldiers. One of the men in particular was in that noisy, excited state when reason seems to have run riot, and folly and madness have been taken for companions.