s side.

'I should be glad of the honour of your company, Lieutenant Puddock, to
dinner this evening--Sturk comes, and Captain Cluffe, and this wonderful
Mr. Dangerfield too, of whom we all heard so much at mess, at five
o'clock, if the invitation's not too late.'

The lieutenant acknowledged and accepted, with a blush and a very low
bow, his commanding officer's hospitality; in fact, there was a _tendre_
in the direction of Belmont, and little Puddock had inscribed in his
private book many charming stanzas of various lengths and structures, in
which the name of 'Gertrude' was of frequent recurrence.

'And--a--I say, Puddock--Lieutenant O'Flaherty, I thought--I--I thought,
d'ye see, just now, eh? (he looked inquisitively, but there was no
answer); I thought, I say, he looked devilish out of sorts, is
he--a--_ill_?'

'He _was very_ ill, indeed, this afternoon, general; a sudden attack----'

The general looked quickly at Puddock's plump, consequential face; but
there was no further light in it. 'He _was_ hurt then, I knew it'--he
thought--'who's attending him--and why is he out--and was it a
flesh-wound--or where was it?' all these questions silently, but
vehemently, solicited an answer--and he repeated the last aloud, in a
careless sort of way.

'And--a--Lieutenant Puddock, you were saying--a--tell me--now--_where_
was it?'

'In the park, general,' said Puddock, in perfect good faith.

'Eh? ah! in the park, was it? but I want to know, you know, what part of
the body--d'ye see--the shoulder--or?----'

'The duodenum, Dr. Toole called it--just here, general,' and he pressed
his fingers to what is vulgarly known as the 'pit' of his stomach.

'What, Sir, do you mean to say the pit of his stomach?' said the
general, with more horror and indignation than he often showed.

'Yes, just about that point, general, and the pain was very violent
indeed,' answered Puddock, looking with a puzzled stare at the general's
stern and horrified countenance--an officer might have a pain in his
stomach, he thought, without exciting all that emotion. Had he heard of
the poison, and did he know more of the working of such things than,
perhaps, the doctors did?

'And what in the name of Bedlam, Sir, does he mean by walking about the
town with a hole through his--his what's his name? I'm hanged but I'll
place him under arrest this moment,' the general thundered, and his
little eyes swept the perspective this way and that, as if they w