“I will prevent you,” he answered, sternly. “I am your superior officer, and the corps you belong to is not disbanded. If you try to leave this place you shall be arrested as a deserter. Now don’t be a fool, lad; you have killed one man, and got out of the mess. If you kill another you will not get out of it. Besides, what will the satisfaction be? If you want revenge, be patient. It will come. I have seen something of life; at least, I am old enough to be your father, and I know that you think me a cynic because I laugh at your ‘high-falutin’ about women. How justly I warned you, you see now. But, cynic or not, I believe in the God above us, and I believe, too, that there is a rough justice in this world. It is in the world principally that people expiate the sins of the world; and if this marriage is such a wicked thing as you think, it will bring its own trouble with it, without any help from you. Time will avenge you. Everything comes to him who can wait.” Ernest’s eyes glittered coldly as he answered: “I cannot wait. I am a ruined man already; all my life is laid waste. I wish to die, but I wish to kill him before I die.” “So sure as my name is Alston you shall not go!” “So sure as my name is Kershaw I _will_ go!” For a moment the two men faced one another; it would have been hard to say which looked the most determined. Then Mr. Alston turned and left the room and the house. On the verandah he paused and considered for a moment. “The boy means business,” he thought to himself. “He will try and bolt. How can I stop him? Ah, I have it!” And he set off briskly towards Government House, saying aloud as he went, “I love that lad too well to let him destroy himself over a jilt.” CHAPTER XII. ERNEST RUNS AWAY When Alston left the room, Ernest sat down on the bed again. “I am not going to be domineered over by Alston,” he said excitedly; “he presumes upon his friendship.” Jeremy came and sat beside him, and took hold of his arm. “My dear fellow, don’t talk like that. You know he means kindly by you. You are not yourself just yet. By-and-by you will see things in a different light.” “Not myself, indeed! Would you be yourself, I wonder, if you knew that the woman who had pinned all your soul to her bosom, as though it were a ribbon, was going to marry another man to-morrow?” “Old fellow, you forget, though I can’t talk of it in as pretty words as you can, I loved her too. I could bear to give her up to you, especially as she didn’t care a brass farthing about me; but when I think about this other fellow, with his cold gray eye and that mark on his confounded forehead—ah, Ernest, it makes me sick!” And they sat on the bed together and groaned in chorus, looking, to tell the truth, rather absurd.