Away to the north-east of the hospital lies that cemetery which for many a year to come will be a place of pilgrimage for the British globe-trotter. There are the hunched, high-shouldered monuments of many buried men, with the turban with its wreathen carvings to indicate the resting place of the master sex. In those days, when the shallow graves were being very quickly filled, the convalescent inmates of the hospital made the cemetery their favourite promenading ground, and it was here, upon a shining March Monday, that Polson and Major de Blacquaire encountered each other on their wanderings amid the tombs, the one on crutches, and the other painfully supporting his footsteps by the aid of a walking stick. ‘Since they began to sort us about,’ said De Blacquaire, ‘I’ve lost sight of you. And you’ve never answered my question. Now, what the devil _did_ you do it for?’ ‘Look here,’ said Polson, using his favourite locution, ‘you’ve threatened two or three times to make an end of me.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Major, nodding and drawling on the word. ‘That’s right enough, But what’s that got to do with it?’ ‘Well, you see,’ said Polson, ‘I’d got to give you the chance to do it.’ ‘Had you?’ said Major de Blacquaire. The one man was leaning on his crutches, and the other was stooping on his crutch walking-stick, and there was nobody near so far as either of them could see. ‘I don’t know,’ said De Blacquaire, in a drooping voice. ‘I may be all wrong, and in a sort of way knocked to pieces, don’t you know. But I think on the whole, Sergeant, that you have acted like an unusually damned good fellow. Do you mind?’--he pointed to a sunken tomb by a motion of one of his crutches, and he sat down upon it. ‘What has a fellow got to do when another fellow has fetched him out of the fire at the risk of his own life, and one fellow hates the other fellow like the very devil? I’ll tell you straight, Polson,’ said De Blacquaire, in his old-mannered drawl, ‘I’d have seen you damned and done for before I’d have reached out a finger to save you. And I think that you are the blamedest kind of an ass and a duffer to have pulled me out. And yet I don’t know--I’m not so cursed certain that you’ll suffer for it.’ CHAPTER XII In the pale spring sunlight where they sat, there came a wholly incongruous figure. It was clad in black broadcloth, and black kid gloves, and there was a black shining silk hat on the top of it; and in one of the black kid gloved hands was balanced a black silk umbrella. The figure was that of John Jervase, and he was walking amidst the tombs of Scutari with about as much visible emotion as he would have shown if he had been on his daily walk to the Stock Exchange in Stevenson Place, Birmingham. ‘They told me at the hospital as you’d got leave for a bit of a walk, Polly, and one of the chaps said it was likely I should find you here. You’re better, ain’t you? There’s a little bit of colour in your face this morning.’