"Of course you are still greatly changed, but you are
getting back your old expression, and I hope that in the course of
two or three months you will be able to take your place in the
ranks again."
"I don't know, sir. I ain't fit to stay with the regiment, and have
thought of being invalided home and then buying my discharge. I
know you have said nothing as to how you got that wound, not even
to the doctor; for if you had done so there is not a man in
hospital who would have spoken to me. But how could I join the
regiment again? knowing that if there was any suspicion of what I
had done, every man would draw away from me, and that there would
be nothing for me to do but to put a bullet in my head."
"But no one ever will know it. It was a mad act, and I believe you
were partly mad at the time."
"I think so myself now that I look back. I think now that I must
have been mad all along. It never once entered my mind to doubt
that it was you, and now I see plainly enough that except what the
man said about going away--and anyone might have said that--there
was not a shadow of ground or suspicion against you. But even if I
had never had that suspicion I should have left home.
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