looking with an intent scrutiny at the scarred and bandaged face
on the pillow. He had felt from the first that this man was no ordinary
ranker. Yet till that moment it had never occurred to him that they
might have met before.

"I always liked Rotherby," the husky voice went on. "He was a big swell,
and he didn't think much of small fry. But you--you and he were friends,
weren't you?"

"For a time," the doctor said. "It didn't last."

There was regret in his voice--the keen regret of a man who has lost a
thing he valued.

"No; it didn't last," Ford agreed. "I remember when you chucked him. Or
was it the other way round? I saw a good deal of him in those days. I
thought him a jolly good fellow, till I found out what a scoundrel he
was. And I had a soft feeling for him even then. You knew he was a
scoundrel, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew."

The doctor spoke reluctantly. The hospital tent, the silent row of
wounded men, the stifling atmosphere, the flies, all were gone from his
inner vision. He was looking with grave, compassionate eyes at the
picture that absorbed the man at his side.

"He was good company, eh?" the restless voice went on. "But he had his
black moments. I didn't know him so well in the days when you and he
were friends."

"Nor I," the doctor said. "But--why do you want to talk of him?"

Again he was searching the face at his side with grave intensity. It did
not seem to him that this man could ever have been of the sort that his
friend Rotherby would have cared to admit to terms of intimacy.
Rotherby--notwithstanding his sins--had been fastidious in many ways.

The answer seemed to make the matter more comprehensible.

"I was with him when he died," the man said. "It was in just such an
inferno as this. We were alone together, looking for gold in the
Australian desert. We didn't find it, though it was there, mountains of
it. The water gave out. We tossed for the last drain--and I won. That
was how Rotherby came to die. He hadn't much to live for, and he was
going to die, anyhow. A queer chap, he was. He and his wife never lived
together after the smash came, and he had to leave the country. Perhaps
you knew?"

"Yes," the doctor said again, "I knew."

Ford moved his head restlessly.

"The thought of her used to worry him in the night," he said. "I've
known him lie for hours not sleeping, just staring up at the stars, and
thinking, thinking. I've sometimes thought that the worst torture on