"Yes, sir; go on," said Dickenson savagely--"after running away--" "He came quite to himself, felt that he would be branded as a coward by all who knew him, and then, in a mad fit of despair--" "Yes, sir--and then?" "You told me that he came back without his revolver." "Yes, sir," said Dickenson mockingly--"and then he didn't blow his brains out." "No," said the doctor quietly, "for he had lost his pistol, perhaps in the fight; but it seems to me, Dickenson, that in his agony of shame, despair, and madness, he tried to hang himself." "Tried to do what?" roared Dickenson. "What I say, my dear boy," said the doctor gravely. "I say, doctor, have you been too much in the sun?" said Dickenson, with a forced laugh, one which sounded painful in the extreme. "No, my dear fellow; I am perfectly calm, and everything points to the fact--his state when you found him, sorrowful, repentant, and utterly exhausted by his sufferings in his struggles to get back to face it out like a man." "Doctor, you are raving. His appearance was all compatible with a struggle, fighting with the Boers--a prisoner bravely fighting for his escape. Everything points to your fact? Nonsense, sir--absurd!" "You're a brave, true-hearted fellow, Dickenson, my lad, and I like you none the less for being so rude to me in your defence of your poor friend. He must be sleeping now after the dose I gave him. Come with me, and I'll give you a surprise." "Not such a one as you have already given me, doctor," said the young man bitterly. "We shall see," said the doctor quietly; and the next minute he was standing by Lennox's side, carefully lifting a moistened bandage laid close to his neck. Dickenson uttered a faint cry of horror. For deeply marked in his friend's terribly swollen neck there was a deep blue mark such as would have been caused by a tightened cord, and in places the skin was torn away, leaving visible the eroded flesh. "Oh doctor!" groaned Dickenson, trembling violently. "Hold up, my dear boy," whispered his companion. "No one knows of it but my orderly, you, and myself. It will soon heal up, and I shall not feel it my duty to mention it to a soul." CHAPTER THIRTY THREE. THE TALE HE TOLD. "Look here, Roby," said Dickenson, three or four days later, when, having a little time on his hands--the Boers, consequent upon their late defeat, having been very quiet--he went in to sit with the captain of his company, finding him calm and composed, and ready to talk about the injury to his head, which seemed to be healing fast. "Precious lucky for me, Dickenson," he said; "an inch lower and there would have been promotion for somebody. Narrow escape, wasn't it?" "Awfully." "Such a nuisance, too, lying up in this oven. I tell Emden that I should get better much faster if he'd let me get up and go about; but he will not listen." "Of course not; you're best where you are. You couldn't wear your helmet."