“Oh, nothing like whist for a headache,” answered Hartog, turning up the last card. “Ace of diamonds.” However, after stumbling through one game—after twice trumping his partner’s trick, a revoke, and several such like blunders—he rose to his feet. “It’s no use, you fellows; I’m no good to-night—I can’t even see the cards. Get some one to take my place and make a fresh start.” “Why, you’re ill, Bootles,” cried Preston. “What is it?” “It’s a devil of a headache,” answered Bootles, promptly. “Here’s Miles—the very man. Goodnight.” “Good-night,” called the fellows after him. Then they settled down to their game, and Preston dealt. “Never saw Bootles seedy before,” said Lacy. “Oh yes; he gets these headaches sometimes,” answered Hartog. “Not often, though. Miles, your lead.” Meantime Bootles went wearily away, almost feeling his road under the veranda of the mess-rooms, along the broad _pavé_ in front of the officers’ quarters, and up the wide flight of stone steps to his rooms facing the green of the barrack square. Being the senior captain, with only one bachelor field-officer in the regiment, he had two large and pleasant rooms, not very grandly furnished, for, though a rich man, he was not an extravagant one, and saw no fun in having costly goods and chattels to be at the tender mercies of soldier servants; but they were neat, clean, and comfortable, with a sufficiency of great easy travelling-chairs, plenty of fur rugs, and lots of pretty little pictures and knickknacks. The fire in his sitting-room was fast dying out, but a bright and cheerful blaze illumined his sleeping-room, shining on the brass knobs of his cot, on the silver ornamentations at the corners of his dressing-case, on three or four scent bottles on the tall cretonne-petticoated toilette table, and on the tired but resplendent figure of Bootles himself. He dragged the big chair pretty near to the fire, and dropped into it with a sigh of relief, absolutely too sick and weary to think about getting into bed just then. As Hartog had said, sometimes these headaches seized him, but it did not happen often; in fact, he had not had one for more than a year—quite often enough, he said. Well, he had been lying in the big and easy chair, his eyes shut and his hands hanging idly over the broad straps which served for arms, for perhaps half an hour, when to his surprise he heard a soft rustling movement behind him. His first and not unnatural thought was that the fellows had come to draw him, so, without moving, he called out, “Oh! confound it all, don’t come boring a poor devil with a headache. By Jove, it’s cruelty to animals, neither more nor less.”