I shall think
much better of you for doing your duty like a man, than if you went
home again and shrank from it."
"You are too good, sir, altogether too good."
"Nonsense, man. Besides, you have to remember that you have not
gone unpunished. Had it not been for your feeling, after you had,
as you believed, killed me, you never would have stood and let that
Sepoy shoot you; so that all the pain that you have been going
through, and may still have to go through before you are quite
cured, is a punishment that you have yourself accepted. After a man
has once been punished for a crime there is an end of it, and you
need grieve no further over it; but it will be a lesson that I hope
and believe you will never forget.
"Hackett, who has been my soldier servant for the last five years,
was killed in the fight in the Kaiser Bagh. If you like, when you
rejoin, I shall apply for you in his stead. It will make your work
a good deal easier for you, and I should like to have the son of
one of my old tenants about me."
The man burst into tears.
"There, don't let's say anything more about it," Mallett went on,
taking the thin hand of the soldier in his.
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