“Still and all, I was full of hope, expecting my stripes and hearing every mail from Polly, when one day the letter corporal handed me an envelope with a deep black edge; it was from Sergeant Fairon telling me Polly was dead; taken off in three hours with cholera. He enclosed half a letter she was writing to me when she was called. Well, sir, I would not believe it! No; I held out agin it for days; but of course I had to give in. At first the grief was just a little scratch; but every day the pain went deeper and deeper, as if some one was turning a knife in my heart. To think I’d never look upon her again or hear her voice, and her gay laugh, it seemed impossible—but, in the end, I _believed_, and I felt as if I was groping about in black darkness! What had I to live for? What was the good of going on? “At times I thought of my rifle, but I put that idea aside because of the regiment and the scandal in the newspapers—still, I was always meditating some way _out_. I think now, if I’d opened my mind to one of my pals, it would have been easier, and I’d not have felt it so cruel hard; but somehow I’d never breathed the name of Polly to one of them—I held her like a holy thing apart. I could not stand the talk and the coarse chaff of the barrack-room, so I kept my trouble sealed up, till at last it grew too big for me, and I made up my mind to do away with myself, where no one would be a penny the wiser. I got a couple of days’ leave—by way of seeing a pal at Tonghoo—and I went up the river and away into the Jungles, and wandered about looking for some venomous reptile to put an end to me in a natural way! But, if you’ll believe me, sir, divil a bite could I get—not after searching for half a day; and, av coorse, had I been looking without intention, I’d have found dozens.