“No, I did not, but I heard quite enough.  Everyone knew that you were going in a day or two, and that was enough for me after what I had seen in the afternoon.”

“You saw nothing in the afternoon,” Captain Mallett said, angrily.  “The girl’s father and mother were at home.  We were all chatting together until we came out.  She came to the trap with me while they stood at the open window.  It was not more than a minute before I drove off.  I have not spoken to the girl half a dozen times since she was a little child.

“Why, man, if everyone took such insane fancies in his head as you do, no man would dare to speak to a woman at all.

“However,” he went on in an altered voice, “this is not a time for anger.  You are very ill, Lechmere, but the doctor has not given you up, and I trust that you will yet get round and will be able to prove to your own satisfaction that, whatever has happened to this poor girl, I, at least, am wholly innocent of it.  But should you not get over this hurt, I should not like you to go to your grave believing that I had done you this great wrong.  I speak to you as to a dying man, and having no interest in deceiving you, and I swear to you before Heaven that I know absolutely nothing of this.  I, too, may fall from a rebel shot before long, and I thank God that I can meet you before Him as an innocent man in this matter.

“I must be going, for I see the doctor coming to fetch me.  Goodbye, lad, we may not meet again, though I trust we shall; but if not, I give you my full forgiveness for that shot you fired at me.  It was the result of a strange mistake, but had I acted as you believed, I should have well deserved the death you intended for me.”

“Confound it, Mallett, there seems no end of mischief from your visit here.  In the first place, you were nearly knocked over yourself, and now there is this man lying insensible.  So for goodness’ sake get off to your room again, and lie down and keep yourself quiet for the rest of the day.  I shall have you demoralising the whole ward if you stay here.”

Captain Mallett walked back with a much feebler and less steady step than that with which he had entered the hospital.  He had some doubts whether the man who had made this strange accusation and had so nearly taken his life was really sane, and whether he had not altogether imagined the conversation which he declared he had heard in the garden.  He remembered now the sudden way in which George Lechmere had turned round and gone away when he saw him saying goodbye to Martha, and how she had shrugged her shoulders in contempt.

The man must either be mad, or of a frightfully jealous disposition, to conjure up harm out of such an incident:  and one who would do so might well, when his brain was on fire, conjure up this imaginary conversation.  Still, he might have heard some man talking to her.  From what Sir John had said, she did leave the house and go into the garden about that hour, and she certainly never returned.