spent lying behind
the stone, was the demon to be kept out. Of all things he dreaded
inactivity, and though he would drop upon his cot in the tiny bedroom that
had been a Hospital ward-pantry, and sleep the heavy sleep of weariness
the moment his head touched the pillow, yet he would start awake after an
hour or two, parched with that savage, unquenched thirst, and drink great
draughts of the brackish well-water, boiled for precaution's sake, and
tramp the confined space until the grip of desire grew slack. But he had
never once yielded since the night when a man with the eye and voice of a
leader among men had come to the house in Harris Street and taken him by
the hand.

Do you say impossible, that the man in whom the habit of vice had formed
should be able to cast off his degrading weakness, like a shameful
garment, by sheer force of will, and be sane and strong and masterful
again? I say, possible with this man. You see him plucked from the slough
by the strong hand of manly fellowship, and nerved and strengthened, if
only for a little while, to play the game for the sake of that other's
belief in him. Such influence have such men among their fellows for good
or for ill.

You can see the Dop Doctor upon this brilliant November morning mounting a
charger lent him by his friend, a handsome Waler full of mettle and
spirit--oats not being yet required for the support of humans--and calling
au revoir to Taggart as he rides away from the Hospital gates followed by
an orderly of the R.A.M.C. in a spider, pulled by a wiry, shabby little
Boer mare.

"The man rides like a fox-hunter," commented Taggart, noticing the ease of
the seat, the light handling of the rein, the way in which the fidgety,
spirited beast Saxham rode answered to the gentling hand and the guiding
pressure of the rider's knee, as a sharp storm of rifle-fire swept from
the enemy's northern trenches, and the Mauser bullets spurted sand between
the wheels of the spider and under the horses' bellies.

Saxham spurred ahead, the spider following. The bullet-pierced, grey felt
smasher hat, a manly and not unpicturesque headgear, sat on the man's
close-cropped head with a soldierly air becoming to the square,
opaque-skinned face that had power and strength and virility in every line
of it. The blue eyes, under their black bar of meeting eyebrows, were
clear now, and the short aquiline nose, rough-hewn but not coarse, and the
grimly-tender mouth were no longer