"Because of course you would have sunk with him, for you couldn't have
swum for your life with a wounded arm."

"No; but shouldn't I have had my name written in history?"

"Perhaps. But you and I would never have met and become such good
friends; for you know we are precious good friends when we can agree."

Morny laughed.

"Yes," he said pleasantly, "when we can agree. But do you think it was
good treatment to keep us shut up there as prisoners on that dreary
moor?"

"Let's see," said Rodd; "Dartmoor--all amongst the streams and tors, as
they call them?"

"Yes; a great granite desert."

"Oh, but it was very jolly there," said Rodd.

"I don't know what you mean by jolly," said Morny contemptuously.

"Why, they didn't keep you shut up. They let you roam about as you
liked, didn't they, as long as you didn't try to escape?"

"Well--yes; but it was a long time before I went out at all," replied
Morny sadly. "For months I never left my father's side, and for a long
time I never expected that he'd recover; and as I used to sit there by
his bedside, watching, I began to get to hate the English more and more,
and long to get away so as to begin righting for my country again. But
of course I couldn't leave my wounded father's side."

"No," said Rodd slowly and in a low voice, as if repeating the words to
himself. "Of course you couldn't leave your father's side."

"No," repeated Morny softly, "I couldn't leave my father's side. But
after a time he made me go. He said my wound would never heal--for the
surgeon had told him so--if he kept me shut up day after day, and that I
must go out with the other prisoners and roam about on the moor; but I
said I wouldn't leave him, and I didn't till he told me one day that I
was growing white and thin and weak, and that he could see how I was
suffering from the pain in my wound."

"Ah, yes," said Rodd, in a low tone full of earnestness. "It must have
given you terrible pain."

"And at last he said," continued Morny, "that if he saw me getting well
it would be the best cure for his injuries, but that if I were obstinate
and refused to obey him now that he was lying there weak and helpless,
it would surely send him to his grave."

"And then of course you went?" replied Rodd excitedly.

"Yes, I went then," replied Morny, "for at last I had begun to see that
he was right. And then every morning after we had been all mustered, as
you call it, and were free to go outs