act, Macleod," said
the major, as they walked along. "The climate of London is too exciting
for you; a good, long, dull winter in Mull will restore your tone. But
in the meantime don't cut my throat, or your own, or anybody else's."

"Am I likely to do that?" Macleod said, laughing.

"There was young Bouverie," the major continued, not heeding the
question--"what a handsome young fellow he was when he joined us at
Gawulpoor!--and he hadn't been in the place a week but he must needs go
regular head over heels about our colonel's sister-in-law. An uncommon
pretty woman she was, too--an Irish girl, and fond of riding; and dash
me if that fellow didn't fairly try to break his neck again and again
just that she should admire his pluck! He was as mad as a hatter about
her. Well, one day two or three of us had been riding for two or three
hours on a blazing hot morning, and we came to one of the irrigation
reservoirs--big wells, you know--and what does he do but offer to bet
twenty pounds he would dive into the well and swim about for ten
minutes, till we hoisted him out at the end of the rope. I forget who
took the bet, for none of us thought he would do it: but I believe he
would have done anything so that the story of his pluck would be
carried to the girl, don't you know. Well, off went his clothes, and in
he jumped into the ice-cold water. Nothing would stop him. But at the
end of the ten minutes, when we hoisted up the rope, there was no
Bouverie there. It appeared that on clinging on to the rope he had
twisted it somehow, and suddenly found himself about to have his neck
broken, so he had to shake himself free and plunge into the water again.
When at last we got him out, he had had a longer bath than he had
bargained for; but there was apparently nothing the matter with him--and
he had won the money, and there would be a talk about him. However, two
days afterward, when he was at dinner, he suddenly felt as though he had
got a blow on the back of his head--so he told us afterward--and fell
back insensible. That was the beginning of it. It took him five or six
years to shake off the effects of that dip--"

"And did she marry him, after all?" Macleod said, eagerly.

"Oh dear, no! I think he had been invalided home not more than two or
three months when she married Connolly, of the Seventy-first Madras
Infantry. Then she ran away from him with some civilian fellow, and
Connolly blew his brains out. That," said the major