"HALT!"
"Why, it was plain enough," said Jerry, one day as he sat by Richard's
bed. "He'd made all his plans and led you on out there on purpose."
"Nonsense, man!"
"Ah, you may call it nonsense, if you like, because you don't see
through it now no more than you did then."
"Of course I don't. When once you take a dislike to a man, you see
nothing but evil in him. You invent things."
"Oh, do I!" cried Jerry. "Never mind. I couldn't invent so much
wickedness as he's got in him, if I tried all night. Now, just let me
ask you two or three questions."
"Go on then," said Dick, wearily.
"Here goes then. You know your cousin to be in the habit of going out
grassing and taking walks up Constitootion Hill for training hisself?"
"Well, no, Jerry, I never did."
"Never found him fond o' buttercups and daisies, or prospects and views
and that sort o' thing?"
"No."
"Nor yet taking six or seven or eight-mile walks to get himself a
happetite?"
"Never."
"Then don't it seem a little strange as he should have done it that day
and walked on and on, and never once made out that you were close behind
him all the time?"
"It did seem strange to me once or twice. In fact, I felt pretty
certain that he saw me."
"Oh, no; not likely," said Jerry, with a derisive grin. "He's too nice
and innocent a young gentleman as to think that sooner or later you'd be
making him give up the title and the money. He wasn't likely to say to
himself, `I'll walk right away into the lonesomest place I can find, and
coax him on and on till I get him where there's not a soul likely to be
about, right down in one of the hop-gardens.' He wouldn't ever dream o'
taking a loaded revolver with him and shoot you, so as to be able to
enter to the property and be Sir Mark--not him!"
Dick remained silent, but his fingers were tearing impatiently at the
bed-clothes.
"He wouldn't say to himself, `I'll delude him down into a place like
that and give him one pill.' And no one would ever say he was a likely
gentleman to think of sticking the pistol in your hand so as to make it
seem, when you were found by the hop-pickers, that you had done it
yourself."
Dick drew a long deep breath, and Jerry went on.
"I'm getting too wicked altogether. Soldiering's pysoning my morals--
there's no mistake about it. You see how I get thinking all kinds of
bad about as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever was born to be a
comfort to people."
"Hold your tongue!" said Dick hoarsely. "Look here, Jerry, you don't
think it possible that my cousin could have planned all that?"
"Think it possible!" cried Jerry contemptuously; "why, I'm sure of it.
He was getting desperate; and how you could go on looking at it all in
such a hinnercent way caps me. Why, a child could see through it all,
and so could you, only you wouldn't. You knew it was just as I said,
now didn't you?"
"I tried not to, Jerry, but it would take that shape."
"Of course it would, because there was no other shape for it to take.
Officers wear swords, but they don't go out walking in plain clothes
with six-shooters in their pockets, to take aim at their cousins in
lonely places. Well, he made a mistake this time, and so he'll find."
But Mark Frayne was not heard of again for years, when someone brought
news of having seen him far up the country in Queensland; but it might
only have been a rumour, after all.
This was long after Sir Richard Frayne's promotion to captain in the
regiment which he joined in India; for when he had fully recovered from
the wound which brought him within an inch of death--the fever caused by
the exposure playing its part--he went through a course of study and
received his commission. While he remained in England, many were the
pleasant weeks he spent with his friends the Laceys, and many the
poorly-played duets that followed on the flutes.
There was no difficulty about the resumption of the title, and though
the estate had been sorely plundered by the reckless spendthrift and
gambler who had held it for a time, it soon began to recover in careful
hands; while, as to Lacey, his losses were balanced by a heavy legacy
just before he married, when he looked as handsome and easy-going as
ever; and so he remained until stirred to action, as he subsequently
was, when in Africa, upon more than one occasion. Then he proved a
tough customer to have to deal with.
"And so you will not stay with Captain Lacey, Jerry?" said Sir Richard
one day.
"No, S'Richard. I'd do anything for him, sir; and, as for his dear
lady, she knows as I'd be her slave, but I seem to belong to you, sir,
and, as you're going out to Indy, I feel as if I must go too, and so I
volunteers."
Jerry did go, and nursed his master after wounds received in struggles
with the Hill Tribes, and, after fever, too; but never was Sir Richard
Frayne so near death as upon that day when he was borne back to Ratcham
upon a hurdle and the truth came out.
"Ah!" Jerry used to mutter sometimes over his pipe, "that was a narrow
squeak. But what I say is, there's worse lives than a soldier's, so
three cheers for The Queen's Scarlet."