And he swung off on his crutches and presently levered himself into the ward where Hardy lay.

In actual bodily recovery the latter’s physical condition fully equalled Redmond’s, but the brooding, listless demeanor of the patient confirmed only too well the Doctor’s diagnosis.  Now, sunk in the coma of utter dejection, Hardy was lying back on his pillows like a man weary of life.

Sometime earlier, in response to his earnest solicitations, he had been allowed to have his beloved parrot in hospital with him.  All day long the disreputable-looking bird gabbled away contentedly as it climbed around in its cage, which had been placed on a small table alongside the cot.

McCullough’s first move was to resort to the never-failing expedient of arousing the parrot’s ire by puffing tobacco-smoke into its cage.  Mechanically the outraged bird responded with a shocking blast of invective, winking rapidly its white parchment-lidded eyes and swinging excitedly to and fro on its perch.

Hardy admonished the joker—­lethargically, but with a certain degree of malevolence in his weary tones.

“Aw, chack it, Mac!” he drawled.  “W’y carn’t yer let th’ bleedin’ bird alone?  Yer know ‘e don’t like that bein’ done t’im.  Jes’ ’awk t’im tellin’ yer as much!”

McCullough turned on his crutches and leered awhile upon the speaker with a sort of mournful triumph, than he lifted up his voice in a very fair imitation of Hardy’s own unmusical wail——­

  “Old soldiers never die, never die, never die,
  Old soldiers never die—­they simply fade aw-ay.”

“I don’t think!” he concluded sotto voce to Davis, as that individual, sitting down on the next cot began preparing his wounded arm for the ministrations of Sister Marthe who had just entered the ward.

“No use!” McCullough rambled on.  “I tell yu’ th’ man’s as good as ’gone up.’  Harry. . . .  Well!  I’ll have old Kissiwasti when he pegs out anyway.  I won’t half smoke-dry th’ old beggar then!  I’ll teach him to swear. . . !”

“Eh! . . .  ’Ere, wot abaht it?”

The cockney’s voice held no trace of lethargy now.  The sharply-uttered, vindictive query was matched by the blazing eyes which were regarding the farrier-corporal with undisguised hostility.

“Wot abaht wot?” mimicked McCullough, though his heart smote him for the cold-blooded evasion.

“Wot abaht wot you sed abaht me. . . ?”

“Well, wot abaht it. . . ?”

Speechless with rage, for a moment Hardy gazed into the other’s nonchalant mask-like visage, then, with a gesture of maniacal impotence, he raised his clenched fists high above his head.

Sister Marthe now judged it high time to intervene.  During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment.  Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had passed between the two men.