‘My compliments and thanks!’ said I.

‘You must know—­that’s the short and the long,’ he proceeded.  ’All of you in shed B are bound to know.  And I want to ask you where is the common-sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this cock-and-bull story between friends.  Come, come, my good fellow, own yourself beaten, and laugh at it yourself.’

‘Well, I hear you, go ahead,’ said I.  ‘You put your heart in it.’

He crossed his legs slowly.  ‘I can very well understand,’ he began, ’that precautions have had to be taken.  I dare say an oath was administered.  I can comprehend that perfectly.’ (He was watching me all the time with his cold, bright eyes.) ’And I can comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you would be very particular to keep it.’

‘About an affair of honour?’ I repeated, like a man quite puzzled.

‘It was not an affair of honour, then?’ he asked.

‘What was not?  I do not follow,’ said I.

He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat awhile silent, and began again in the same placid and good-natured voice:  ’The court and I were at one in setting aside your evidence.  It could not deceive a child.  But there was a difference between myself and the other officers, because I knew my man and they did not.  They saw in you a common soldier, and I knew you for a gentleman.  To them your evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to hear you telling.  Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go?  Not surely so far as to help hush a murder up?  So that—­when I heard you tell how you knew nothing of the matter, and were only awakened by the corporal, and all the rest of it—­I translated your statements into something else.  Now, Champdivers,’ he cried, springing up lively and coming towards me with animation, ’I am going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me to see justice done:  how, I don’t know, for of course you are under oath—­but somehow.  Mark what I’m going to say.’

At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and whether he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am sure I could not tell you to this day.  For, as the devil would have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had pinked.  The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony.  My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown deadly pale.

He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there.  ’What is wrong with you?’ said he.

‘It is nothing,’ said I.  ‘A qualm.  It has gone by.’

‘Are you sure?’ said he.  ‘You are as white as a sheet.’

‘Oh no, I assure you!  Nothing whatever.  I am my own man again,’ I said, though I could scarce command my tongue.

‘Well, shall I go on again?’ says he.  ‘Can you follow me?’