The Queen's Scarlet Part 62

He was getting desperate; and how you could go on looking at it all in such a hinnercent way caps me. Why, a child could see through it all, and so could you, only you wouldn't. You knew it was just as I said, now didn't you?"

"I tried not to, Jerry, but it would take that shape."

"Of course it would, because there was no other shape for it to take.

Officers wear swords, but they don't go out walking in plain clothes with six-shooters in their pockets, to take aim at their cousins in lonely places. Well, he made a mistake this time, and so he'll find."

But Mark Frayne was not heard of again for years, when someone brought news of having seen him far up the country in Queensland; but it might only have been a rumour, after all.

This was long after Sir Richard Frayne's promotion to captain in the regiment which he joined in India; for when he had fully recovered from the wound which brought him within an inch of death--the fever caused by the exposure playing its part--he went through a course of study and received his commission. While he remained in England, many were the pleasant weeks he spent with his friends the Laceys, and many the poorly-played duets that followed on the flutes.

There was no difficulty about the resumption of the t.i.tle, and though the estate had been sorely plundered by the reckless spendthrift and gambler who had held it for a time, it soon began to recover in careful hands; while, as to Lacey, his losses were balanced by a heavy legacy just before he married, when he looked as handsome and easy-going as ever; and so he remained until stirred to action, as he subsequently was, when in Africa, upon more than one occasion. Then he proved a tough customer to have to deal with.

"And so you will not stay with Captain Lacey, Jerry?" said Sir Richard one day.

"No, S'Richard. I'd do anything for him, sir; and, as for his dear lady, she knows as I'd be her slave, but I seem to belong to you, sir, and, as you're going out to Indy, I feel as if I must go too, and so I volunteers."

Jerry did go, and nursed his master after wounds received in struggles with the Hill Tribes, and, after fever, too; but never was Sir Richard Frayne so near death as upon that day when he was borne back to Ratcham upon a hurdle and the truth came out.

"Ah!" Jerry used to mutter sometimes over his pipe, "that was a narrow squeak. But what I say is, there's worse lives than a soldier's, so three cheers for The Queen's Scarlet."

THE END.