CHAPTER XV.
MYSTERIES.
"Do you know, Frank," said Manson, a week later, as once more the two lounged beside their camp fire, "that I have the hardest kind of a task to keep myself from believing in omens, and especially the 'three warnings' business? Now, to illustrate, we lost a man out of our company two nights ago, and he was shot within ten feet of where you and I stood the night we were shot at. His name was Bishop, and an old schoolmate of mine. I was on the morning guard-mount detail, and was the first one to see him as we were going along the picket line. He had been shot in the head, and most likely never knew what hit him. To make the fate of Bishop more impressive his going on for night duty instead of myself had been decided by chance."
"Well, what of it?" said Pullen. "It was his bad luck and not yours that time, wasn't it? That fact ought to drive away your presentiments instead of increasing them, my boy."
"Perhaps, and yet it doesn't," replied Manson. "It keeps crowding me into the belief that I am booked for the same fate in the near future, and, do all I can, I can't put that idea away."
"Nonsense," put in Pullen, "that is all bosh, and in the same list with the Friday business, and seeing the moon over your left shoulder, and all that string of superstition that has come down to us, or rather, up to us from the Dark Ages, when mankind believed in no end of hobgoblin things."
"Say, Frank, don't you believe in luck?" interposed Manson. "Don't you believe there is such a thing as good or ill luck in this world, and that one or the other follows us most of the time all through life?"
"Yes, to a certain extent I do," answered Frank. "But I've noticed that good luck comes oftenest to those who put forth the greatest effort, and ill luck is quite apt to chase those who are seemingly born tired."
Manson was silent, for the wholesome optimism of his friend went far to dispel his grewsome imaginings.
"How does a mystery you can't understand affect you, Frank?" he said at last.