“My Dear Mallett: 

“We were all delighted to get your letter.  Long before we received it we had the news of the desperate fighting at Lucknow, which was, of course, telegraphed down to the coast and got here before your letter.  You may imagine that we looked anxiously through the list of killed and wounded, and were glad indeed that your name in the latter had the word ‘slightly’ after it.

“Things are going on here much as usual.  There was a terrible sensation on the very morning after you left, at the disappearance of Martha Bennett, the daughter of one of your tenants.  She left the house just at dusk the evening before, and has not been heard of since.  As she took nothing with her, it is improbable in the extreme that she can have fled, and there can be little doubt that the poor girl was murdered, possibly by some passing tramps.  However, though the strictest search was made throughout the neighbourhood, her body has never been discovered.

“We lost another neighbour just about the time you left—­Percy Carthew.  He went for a year’s big game shooting in North America.  We don’t miss him much, as he lived in London, and was not often down at his place.  I don’t remember his being there since you came back from the Crimea.  Anyhow, I do not think that I ever saw you and him together, either in a hunting field or at a dinner party; which, of course, you would have been had you both been down here at the same time.  If I remember right, you were at the same school.”

And then followed some gossip about mutual friends, and the letter concluded: 

“The general excitement is calming down a little now that Delhi is taken and the garrison of Lucknow brought off.  Of course there will be a great deal more fighting before the whole thing is over, but there is no longer any fear for the safety of India.  The Sikhs have come out splendidly.  Who would have thought it after the tremendous thrashing we gave them a few years back?

“Take care of yourself, lad.  You have the Victoria Cross and can do very well without a bar, so give someone else the chance.  My wife and Bertha send their love.”

Two or three of his other letters were from friends in regiments at home bewailing their hard fortune at being out of the fighting.  The last he opened bore the latest postmark.  It was from his solicitor, and enclosed Marshall’s cancelled bill.

“Of course, as you requested me to give 300 pounds for the enclosed, I did so, but by the way in which Morrison jumped at the offer I believe that he would have been glad to have taken half that sum.”

Mallett had gone into his tent to open his letters in quiet.  He presently went to the entrance, and catching sight of Marshall called him up.

“I have managed that affair for you, Marshall,” he said; “and have arranged it in a way that I am sure will be satisfactory to us both.  You must look upon me now as your creditor instead of Morrison, and you won’t find me a hard one.  Here is your cancelled bill for four hundred and fifty.  I got it for three hundred, so that a third of your debt is wiped off at once.  As to the rest, you can pay me as you intended to pay him, but I don’t want you to stint yourself unnecessarily.  Pay me ten or fifteen pounds at a time at your convenience, and don’t let us say anything more about it.”