I never felt quite the same to our lodger after that little business at the Peel Castle.  It was always in my mind that he was holding a secret from me—­indeed, that he was all a secret together, seeing that he always hung a veil over his past.  And when by chance that veil was for an instant whisked away, we always caught just a glimpse of something bloody and violent and dreadful upon the other side.  The very look of his body was terrible.  I bathed with him once in the summer, and I saw then that he was haggled with wounds all over.  Besides seven or eight scars and slashes, his ribs on one side were all twisted out of shape, and a part of one of his calves had been torn away.  He laughed in his merry way when he saw my face of wonder.

“Cossacks!  Cossacks!” said he, running his hand over his scars.  “And the ribs were broke by an artillery tumbril.  It is very bad to have the guns pass over one.  Now with cavalry it is nothing.  A horse will pick its steps however fast it may go.  I have been ridden over by fifteen hundred cuirassiers A and by the Russian hussars of Grodno, and I had no harm from that.  But guns are very bad.”

“And the calf?” I asked.

“Pouf! It is only a wolf bite,” said he.  “You would not think how I came by it!  You will understand that my horse and I had been struck, the horse killed, and I with my ribs broken by the tumbril.  Well, it was cold—­oh, bitter, bitter!—­the ground like iron, and no one to help the wounded, so that they froze into such shapes as would make you smile.  I too felt that I was freezing, so what did I do?  I took my sword, and I opened my dead horse, so well as I could, and I made space in him for me to lie, with one little hole for my mouth. Sapristi! It was warm enough there.  But there was not room for the entire of me, so my feet and part of my legs stuck out.  Then in the night, when I slept, there came the wolves to eat the horse, and they had a little pinch of me also, as you can see; but after that I was on guard with my pistols, and they had no more of me.  There I lived, very warm and nice, for ten days.”

“Ten days!” I cried.  “What did you eat?”

“Why, I ate the horse.  It was what you call board and lodging to me.  But of course I have sense to eat the legs, and live in the body.  There were many dead about who had all their water bottles, so I had all I could wish.  And on the eleventh day there came a patrol of light cavalry, and all was well.”

It was by such chance chats as these—­hardly worth repeating in themselves—­that there came light upon himself and his past.  But the day was coming when we should know all; and how it came I shall try now to tell you.

The winter had been a dreary one, but with March came the first signs of spring, and for a week on end we had sunshine and winds from the south.  On the 7th Jim Horscroft was to come back from Edinburgh; for though the session ended with the 1st, his examination would take him a week.  Edie and I were out walking on the sea beach on the 6th, and I could talk of nothing but my old friend—­for, indeed, he was the only friend of my own age that I had at that time.  Edie was very silent, which was a rare thing with her; but she listened smiling to all that I had to say.