in mind," he said at last, with a sigh. "How horrible!
and how strange that two people could be so much alike!"

Dick played with the band in the mess-room that evening, and one or two
of his comrades told him he looked ill; but he laughed it off, and tried
to make them believe that the little fit of weariness was a mere
nothing. But his face told a different tale, and that night, when he
went to his bed, sleep refused to come; and to the accompaniment of his
comrades' heavy breathing--that being the most charitable term that can
be applied to it--he once more went over his old life at Mr Draycott's,
from his first entering the great coach's establishment up to the
morning he had left.

At last sleep came--a miserable, feverish slumber, from which he was
aroused by the _reveille_.

"There," he said to himself. "I shall be all right now," as he took his
dripping head out of the bowl of cold water, and felt refreshed by the
scrub he gave himself; but somehow he did not feel right. His head
burned, and he was glad to get out in the open air, in the hope that a
little exercise would clear his brain and drive away the cobweb-like
fancies which seemed to interfere with its working.

Vain hope! The thoughts only came the faster, and at last he began to
ask himself whether he was going to be ill.

"Mark's dead!" he found himself saying mentally; "and there are no such
things as ghosts--education killed the last of them years ago. But it
does seem horrible to come suddenly face to face with a fellow so like
poor Mark that I should have felt ready to declare it was he. Nature
does make people different; and yet that officer is as like him as can
be. Of course, he would have grown set and more manly. And--oh! but
it's impossible! He's dead! he's dead!"

He had gone back into the band-room, where, as of old, some twenty men
were blowing hard, each working up the parts of new pieces, and utterly
regardless, as well as unconscious, of his neighbour--use having given
the bandsmen the ability to practice away deaf to the noise produced by
others. Here he sat down in his own corner, and began to look over his
music, expecting that before long Wilkins would be there to try over a
few pieces in proper harmony instead of discord. But the crotchets and
quavers became people, and the staves the roads along which they passed;
and, the more he tried, the more excited he grew.

For a few minutes he enjoyed a rest, for his ey