being
thrust into a bottle, and the doctor went out of his cabin, shut the
door sharply, and went off, while it was like an electric shock through
me, and I stared wildly, for Walters started up, and in a vicious angry
voice exclaimed--

"Brute! Beast! I only wish--"

He stopped short as he vigorously wrenched himself round.

"I thought you were gone," he said blankly. "He told you to come away."

"I stopped to help you," I said. "I did not like to have you left when
you were so bad."

"No, you didn't," he cried, with a vicious snarl. "You stopped to play
the miserable, contemptible, cowardly spy. It's just like you, Dale.
You always were a beast!"

"If you call me a beast, I'll knock your head off!" I cried, for my
temper was rising against him and against myself, for I felt that I had
been imposed upon, and horribly weak and stupid in my sympathy for one
who was shamming from beginning to end.

"It would take a better man than you," he snarled.

"Not it, though you are bigger and stronger," I cried. "Get up, and
I'll show you."

"Get up," he groaned, "while I'm so weak and bad that I can't stir?"

"Can't stir," I said, as I realised how thoroughly the doctor had read
him, and I understood now why Mr Frewen was so indifferent instead of
being sympathetic. "Why, there's nothing the matter with you at all.
You can move as well as I can. Get up, sneak!"

"Oh!" he groaned, "you're as great a brute as the doctor," and he turned
up his eyes till only the whites showed, making him look so ghastly in
the dim light, that I was ready to fancy I was misjudging him after all.

But I recalled his manner and his utterance as soon as he had made sure
that the doctor had gone, and thought himself quite alone.

"Get up," I said again, "and leave off this miserable shamming. There's
nothing the matter with you at all."

He groaned again, and it made me feel so angry at the thought of his
believing that he could impose upon me again, that I raised my right
foot, whose toes seemed to itch with a desire to kick him.

"Get up!" I cried angrily again.

"I can't, I can't!" he groaned.

"Get up," I said, "or I'll lie down by you and punch your head that
way!"

"Oh, you coward, you coward!" he moaned.

"No, it's you who are the coward, shamming being injured. Will you get
up?"

"What," he snarled, changing his manner again, "to fight with a
miserable coward who is armed?"

"I'm not armed now," I cried,