'It looks a deuced deal more like half-poisoning,' exclaimed the doctor, with a finger on Cecil's pulse. Then turning to Falconer's servant, Tommy Atkins, and a hospital orderly who were in attendance, he ordered his hands to be rubbed, and his head to be bathed with brandy, salts to be held to his nostrils, and a little wine, as soon as he could swallow it, to be given him--for he was unwilling to accept the idea that was forcing itself upon him, that Cecil had, perhaps, taken too much champagne over-night; and then he withdrew. In defiance of the doctor's injunction, which was that he was to lie with a low pillow, Cecil struggled up into a sitting posture and looked rather wildly around him as he greeted his friends. He felt that he was in a dreadful emergency--a coil--yet in his pale face there was that faint indication of a smile that is sadder by far than none; for he felt that however well-meaning and attached to him his brother officers were, they were certain to have but one fatal suspicion in the matter. 'What on earth has come to you, Falconer, old fellow?' said Fotheringhame. 'I never knew of your getting into a scrape like this, even when a greenhorn, who was fined a dozen of Moselle for first drawing his sword, or a ditto for the sergeants' mess on first carrying the colours!' 'By Jove! it knocks me into a cocked hat,' added Freeport; 'I can't reason over it--the whole thing seems so unnatural--so horribly unreal! This is a worse scrape than mine with the three daughters of the depôt commandant.' 'There was safety in the trio,' said Acharn. 'Yes--he couldn't marry them all, certainly,' said Fotheringhame, 'though I am not prepared to say that if the law of Scotland permitted it he might have tried to do so.' 'How can you fellows jest thus?' said Falconer, faintly. 'True--I beg your pardon,' replied Fotheringhame; 'but chaff and fun are such habits with us.' 'I fear that this affair will be no "fun" for me. Have I talked much nonsense, Dick?' 'Well--being screwed--Cecil, you certainly did talk a lot of stuff; but people do that at all times, and even when quite sober.' Falconer felt his heart sink at the view his best friends were taking of this catastrophe. He felt that he was the victim of some hidden and mysterious circumstance over which he had no control; but how was that to be proved? and he knew that in the chief city of Mrs. Grundy the public always took the worst possible view of everything. 'You do not think--you dare not think,' he exclaimed half-entreatingly and half-defiantly, 'that I forgot my position and the honour of the corps, and took too much wine last night--in uniform and at a public ball too, in presence of the general commanding and all the staff?' 'I fear, my dear Falconer,' said Fotheringhame, 'that it only looks too much like that very mistake.' 'By heavens! I was never near the supper-tables but once--and had but one glass of Moselle!' cried Falconer impetuously.