"Any other life," he said, "cannot but be a little dull, a little uninteresting afterwards. I shall miss the Legion very much."
Suddenly he put his hand into his pocket and took out of it that letter from the French War Office which his colonel had handed to him. "Look!" and he handed it over to Warrisden. "That is what I joined the Legion to win--a commission; and I have just not won it. In a month or two, perhaps in a week, perhaps even to-morrow, it might have been mine. Very soon I should have been back at home, the life I have dreamed of and worked for ever since I left London, might have been mine to live. It was to have been a good life of great happiness"--he had forgotten, it seemed, that he would regret the Legion--"a life without a flaw. Now that life's impossible, and I am a deserter. It's hard lines, isn't it?"
He rose from his chair, and looked for a moment at Warrisden in silence.
"I am feeling sorry that I ever came," said Warrisden.
"Oh no," Stretton answered, with a smile. "It would have been still worse if I had stayed here, ignorant of the news you have brought me, and had come home in my own time. Things would have been much worse--beyond all remedy. Do you know a man named Callon--Lionel Callon?" he asked abruptly. And before Warrisden could answer, the blood rushed into his face, and he exclaimed, "Never mind; don't answer! Be at the corner of the barracks with the mule at eight." And he went from the tent, cautiously made his way out of the garden, and returned to his quarters.
A few minutes before eight Warrisden drove the mule, packed with Stretton's purchases, to the south-western corner of the barracks. The night was dark, no one was abroad, the place without habitations. He remained under the shadow of the high wall, watching this way and that for Stretton's approach; and in a few minutes he was almost startled out of his wits by a heavy body falling from the top of the wall upon the ground at his side. Warrisden, indeed, was so taken by surprise that he uttered a low cry.
"Hush!" said a voice close to the ground. "It's only me."
"And Stretton rose to his feet. He had dropped from the summit of the wall.
"Are you hurt?" whispered Warrisden.
"No. Have you the clothes? Thanks!"