ry with an agonising thirst. Then the terrible thought forced
itself upon him that while shooting down ponies he had missed them and
killed men instead, and once more all was blank.

The next time the power of thinking came to the poor fellow all was very
dark, and a jarring pain kept running through him, caused by the motion
of his hard bed, which had somehow grown wheels and was being dragged
along.

Cattle were lowing and sheep bleating. There were shouts, too, such as
he knew were uttered by Kaffir drivers, and there were the crackings of
their great whips.

After a while he made out the trampling of horses and heard men talking,
while in an eager confused way he listened for what they would say about
those two wounded Boers, one of whom had nearly bled to death before
that artery was stopped. These, he felt, must be the Boers he shot when
he ought to have shot ponies.

And as he got to that point the trouble of thinking worried his brain so
that he could think no more, and again all was blank.

At last came a morning when West woke up in a great room which seemed to
be familiar. There were nurses moving about in their clean
white-bordered dresses, and he knew that he was in some place fitted up
as a hospital. Several of the occupants of the beds wore bandages
suggestive of bad wounds, and to help his thoughts there came from time
to time the dull heavy reports of cannon.

He did not recollect all that had preceded his coming yet; but he
grasped the fact that he had been wounded and was now in hospital.

He lay for a few minutes with his brain growing clearer and clearer, and
at last, seeing one of the nurses looking in his direction, he tried to
raise one hand, but could not. The other proved more manageable, and in
obedience to a sign the nurse came, laid a hand upon his forehead, and
smiled down in his face.

"Your head's cooler!" she said. "You're better?"

"Yes," he replied: "have I been very bad?"

"Terribly! We thought once that you would not recover."

"And Ingleborough?"

"Ingleborough? Oh, you mean your companion who was brought in with
you?"

West nodded: he could not speak.

"Well, I think he will get better now!"

"But his wound: is it so bad?"

"He nearly bled to death; but you must not talk much yet."

"Only a little!" said West eagerly. "Pray tell me, he will get better?"

"Oh yes: there's no doubt about it, I believe."

"Oh, thank goodness!" cried West fervently. "