"We were in the hills by Karnsk. There are thick woods there, you know. Pavlof had been restless all along, and I knew he would make a break when the chance offered. It is no good one man bolting, you know. That gives one no chance. We talked as we walked, Pavlof and I and the others, and it was arranged that when he gave the signal a dozen of us would try the trick in different directions. Out of the lot there would be a chance for one or two, and the rest must pay the piper. The time came. We were in thick woods and we scattered like rabbits. It was shouts and shots, and screams from the women, and then I was lying in the brush with this hole in me. They found me soon enough. I had not got twenty yards away. And one by one they dragged the others in, all but two, who got clear----" "And Pavlof was one of them?" asked Paul, in a fever. "No, barin, Pavlof lay alongside me with a bullet through his head, and he was dead. It was a pity, for he was a fine-looking man----" "You are sure he was dead?" "Quite sure, barin, for he lay next to me, and they left him there when they threw me into the teléga and formed up and moved on. Oh, yes; he was dead, or they would not have left him there. And I saw the hole through his head. No man could live with a hole like that in his head." "So!" said Paul, very thoughtfully. "Now you must lie quite still till you heal up." "I could lie quite still for ever, barin." That night, as Paul went up the hill to see his patient in the tent, his pulse was racing, and not with typhus. Captain Sokolof was off his head and maundering fitfully of things and scenes that did not redound over much to his credit. Hope and Madame Roskova were sitting outside the tent to escape as much as possible these unconscious revelations, and when Pavlof had visited his patient, and given his nurses fresh instructions, and promised them an orderly in case he got too much for them, he asked Hope to walk back with him down the hill. She looked at him with quick expectation, and as soon as they were out of hearing, asked breathlessly, "Some news?" "Yes, news, and I think definite and final," and he briefly told her what he had learnt from Ostrog. She walked silently by his side, and finally said, very quietly-- "I am glad you have told me. Anything is better than that terrible suspense. Poor Serge! Yes, he is dead----" They spoke little to one another that night, and presently she turned and went up the hill again, and he went back to his work. But now his thoughts were unchained. If Serge were indeed dead, and there seemed no reasonable doubt of it, there was no earthly reason why they should not come together, no reason why the long fiction of their wedded state should not become fact at last. And he went about among his sick with a new light in his face, and a spark in his dark eyes that gave the sick men more hope of themselves and their prospects.