“Yes. I did, and I do not know whether or not I did wisely. I went through agonies of mind, and when my orderly came at half-past nine to tell me that it was time for me to be starting on my rounds I knew that if I once got out there I should be unable to resist. So I took out a bottle of whisky, filled up my glass, spilt the powder into it, and before the red powder had had time to reach the bottom I had raised the glass to my mouth and emptied it. “It was a good drug for the purpose for which it was required. I sat down in my chair. I did not feel ill, or sick, or dizzy. I just went off, and when I came round it was after half-past ten, and I was safe. I felt no ill effects.” “And that was the end of it?” I said. “As far as I was concerned. But I suppose that the story does not end there really. I met the same man a couple of months later in another café a few miles farther up the coast. He looked cleaner and smarter than when I had seen him before, and he greeted me effusively and stood me drinks. After a while he took me aside. “‘You were a fool,’ he said. “I shrugged my shoulders. “‘I’m glad I was, then.’ “‘You were a fool,’ he repeated, ‘and what has happened? You fling away two thousand pounds--someone else picks them up.’ “‘So you got it through?’ “‘Of course. What did I tell you? The world is not full of Josephs.’ “And two weeks later one of the officers in my company applied for leave to go home to be married. We were all surprised, as he hadn’t much money--only his pay--and had often been heard to lament the length of his engagement. When someone asked if his grandmother had died and left him a fortune, he blushed awkwardly, and said something about a bit of luck on horses. “He never rejoined us after his marriage.” He stopped, and we looked at each other for a moment. “And you wonder whether what you did was right, or not?” “Yes; I’ve been wondering that for twelve years, and I shall go on wondering it to the end. If I had given the powder to the sentry instead of to myself I could have spent the end of my life as I should like to spend it. And I don’t know that it would have been wrong. I am inclined to think that the end justifies the means, and, anyhow, the stuff was bound to be got through.” “But, after all,” I said, “you’ve been happy in the army on the whole?” “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ve been happy enough, but it’s not the sort of life for which I was intended. It’s not easy to explain, but I feel that it could have so easily been so much more happy--if the rough edges had only been ever so slightly trimmed.” And for a long while he sat in silence. He was thinking no doubt of the quiet tragedy of a life lived happily but not intensely. But I thought of the kindly Providence that takes the handling of our destinies out of our control, and had saved this curious old soldier from a career of speculation that could have ended only in pathetic failure. IV