inary duty, but certainly not long marches. If you do
go you will have to ride. There must be no more marching with your
company for some time."

A week later orders were issued, under which the regiment was
appointed to form part of the force which, under the command of
General Walpole, was to undertake a campaign against Rohilcund, a
district in which the great majority of the rebels who had escaped
from Lucknow had now established themselves. Unfortunately, the
extent of the city and the necessity for the employment of a large
proportion of the British force in the actual assault, had
prevented anything like a complete investment of the town, and the
consequence had been that after the fall of the Kaiser Bagh, by far
the greater portion of the rebel force in the city had been able to
march away without molestation.

Before leaving, Mallett had an interview with George Lechmere, who
was now out of danger.

"I should have known you now, Lechmere," he said, as he came to his
bedside. "Of course you are still greatly changed, but you are
getting back your old expression, and I hope that in the course of
two or three months you will be able to take your place in the
ranks again."

"I don't know, sir. I ain't fit to stay with the regiment, and have
thought of being invalided home and then buying my discharge. I
know you have said nothing as to how you got that wound, not even
to the doctor; for if you had done so there is not a man in
hospital who would have spoken to me. But how could I join the
regiment again? knowing that if there was any suspicion of what I
had done, every man would draw away from me, and that there would
be nothing for me to do but to put a bullet in my head."

"But no one ever will know it. It was a mad act, and I believe you
were partly mad at the time."

"I think so myself now that I look back. I think now that I must
have been mad all along. It never once entered my mind to doubt
that it was you, and now I see plainly enough that except what the
man said about going away--and anyone might have said that--there
was not a shadow of ground or suspicion against you. But even if I
had never had that suspicion I should have left home.

"Why, sir, I know that my own father and mother suspected that I
killed her. I resented it at the time. I felt hard and bitter
against it, but as I have been lying here I have come to see that I
brought their suspicions upon myself by my own conduct, and that
t