‘I wasn’t to disturb you, Polly,’ said Jervase, ‘and I’m misbehaving myself. I’ve got to go, and you’ve got to go to sleep; but I’ll be back as soon as ever they’ll let me, and in a day or two’s time you’ll be strong enough for you and me to have a talk together.’ ‘I wish,’ said the feeble, drawling voice from the neighbouring bed, ‘that you would hold your tongue or go. I want to sleep.’ John Jervase stooped to kiss Polson on the forehead, and went his way down the silent ward, with his boots creaking with a fainter and fainter sound, until he reached the folding doors at the far end of the dormitory. The lad lay quiet. He had parted with his father in bitter disdain and anger, but somehow these emotions had all departed from him by this time, and had left him as if they had been an evil spirit, banished by some better influence. He did not know--he was too weak and tired to think about things--but at his side there was an angry stirring and a peevish voice spoke to him. ‘That’s you, is it?’ Polson, a little strengthened by the food he had taken, managed to roll round upon his shoulder, and looked his late enemy in the face. ‘It’s I,’ he said. ‘Indubitably. And it’s you, to a certainty. Where did you get hit?’ There was so long a silence that each thought that the other had fallen asleep; but when it had endured for perhaps the space of twenty minutes, De Blacquaire began to turn and murmur, and at last his words found an articulate form. ‘I say,’ he began, ‘you there! You! Sergeant! Are you awake?’ ‘Wide,’ said Polson. The man beside him lay with pallid face and big bird-like eyes, staring at the smoked semi-circle on the ceiling, and after the inquiry he had offered and the answer given, there was silence again, whilst a man might have counted twenty. ‘They’ve told me all about it,’ said Major de Blacquaire, ‘and I don’t understand it. And I want to understand. What in the name of hell did you fetch me out for?’ ‘You go to sleep,’ said Polson, ‘and don’t ask ridiculous questions.’ ‘I want to know,’ said De Blacquaire. ‘I’ll tell you to-morrow,’ the Sergeant answered. ‘But it’s no good thinking about things just now.’ Again there was a silence, and it lasted for a full hour. The rank petroleum lamp in the sconce burnt out and left a sickening stench upon the air. The whole space in which the wounded men lay went dark, and the wild free wind and the cruel driving rain beat at the window. In the black darkness voices spoke here and there. There were notes of fever from wounded men, and once or twice there was a last message whispered to a nurse’s ear, never to be delivered. Dark and storm, and the heroic long-suffering soul released from the heroic long-suffering body, and going home at midnight.