that afternoon, and I knew that he was going abroad.
What could I suppose but that he had ruined my poor girl, and had
persuaded her to go out to join him in India? I waited for a time,
while they searched for the body I knew they would never find. My
own father and mother, in their hearts, thought that I had murdered
her in a fit of jealous rage. At last I made up my mind to enlist
in his regiment, to follow him to India, kill him, find her, and
bring her home."

"How dreadful!" the girl murmured.

"It was dreadful, Miss Greendale. I believe now that I must have
been mad at the time. However, I did it, but at the end failed.
Mercifully I was saved from being a murderer. As I told you, I was
badly wounded. I thought I was going to die, and the doctor thought
so, too. So I sent for Captain Mallett that I might have the
satisfaction of letting him know that it was I who fired the shot,
and that it was in revenge for the wrong that he had done Martha.

"When I told him I saw by his face, even before he spoke, that I
had been wrong. He knew nothing whatever of it. Well, miss, he
forgave me--forgave me wholly. He told me that he should never
mention it to a soul, and as he has never mentioned it even to you,
you may see how well he has kept his word. I wanted to leave the
regiment. I felt that I could never mix with my comrades, knowing
as I did that I had tried to murder their favourite officer. But
the Major would not hear of it. He insisted that I should stay,
and, even more, he promised that as soon as I was out of hospital I
should be his servant, saying that as the son of an old tenant, he
would rather have me than anyone else. You can well imagine, then,
Miss Greendale, how willingly I would have given my life for him,
and that when the chance came I gladly faced odds to save him.

"Before that I had come to learn who the man was. It was a letter
from my father that first gave me the clue; he mentioned that
another gentleman had left the neighbourhood and gone abroad, just
at the time that Major Mallett did. He was a man who had once made
me madly jealous by his attentions to Martha at a fete given to his
tenants.

"The Major had the same thought, and he told me that he knew the
man was a bad fellow, though he did not say why he thought so. Then
I heard that Martha had returned to die, and I learned that she had
told her mother the name of her destroyer, who deserted her three
months after he had taken her awa