“Well, old chap,” he said, laughing, “I don’t know how you found it—you were, of course, a grown man, a man of the world, before it all began—but I just had to change. It’s no credit to me—I had to! I was a cub, a puppy—I had to become a trained animal. As it was, that infernal temper of mine nearly cost me my commission in the first three months. It would have, by Jove, if Tom Winter—my Company Commander—hadn’t been the best fellow in the world; he was killed six months later, poor chap, but he’d got a muzzle on me before that. You will find me a bit better there; I haven’t had a real old break-out ever since.” “Oh, I daresay you will, when you get fit!” said I consolingly. “Thank you,” he laughed again. “But I don’t want to, you know. They were a bit upsetting to everybody concerned.” He smiled as though in a gentle amusement at his old self. “Only father could manage me—and he couldn’t always. Lord, I was impossible! I might have committed a murder one fine day!” I recollected a certain fine day on which murder, or something very like it, was certainly his purpose. Oh, with a good deal of excuse, no doubt! Perhaps his thoughts had moved in the same direction; seeing me again might well have that effect on him. “I don’t want to exaggerate things. I daresay I’ve a bit of the devil left in me. And I don’t know whether men in general have been affected much by the business. Some have, some haven’t, I expect. Perhaps I’m a special case. The war came at what was for me a very critical moment. For me personally it was a lucky thing, in spite of this old shoulder; and it was lucky that my father was so clear about its coming. I was saved from myself, by Jove, I was!” The “self” of whom he spoke came back to my memory as strangely different and apart from the languid, tranquil man who was talking to me on the long invalid’s chair. He reclined there, smiling thoughtfully. “I bear no malice against the girl,” he went on. “It was my mistake. She went to her own in the end; it was inevitable that she should; and better before marriage—even just before!—than after. Like to like—she and Monkey Valdez!” Though I had my own views as to that, I held my tongue. If once I let out that I had seen Lucinda, one question—if not from Waldo, at any rate from Aunt Bertha—would lead to another, and I should be in danger of betraying the needlewoman’s secret. I had made up my mind to lie if need be, but if I kept silence, it was a hundred to one that it would not occur to any one at Cragsfoot to ask whether I had seen Lucinda. Why should I have seen her? It never did occur to any of the three of them; I was asked no questions.