Caswell started in spite of himself and looked at the youth with surprise. “Williams!” he said to himself. “That is so; it was a Lieutenant Victor Williams.” He knew the story. Every newspaper on the coast of Asia had printed it. “It is strange,” he thought. “He is only a boy.”
Under the guise of looking into the water, he bent forward intently to listen. He was curious to hear that extraordinary narrative from the young man’s own lips.
“It doesn’t make much of a story,” Williams replied. “The first thing we knew, a lot of hombres got around us and cooped us up in a stone church. Bradshaw, my captain, was knocked over in the first firing.”
“Killed?” she asked.
“Yes!” he said. “After that—” He stopped because they heard her aunt calling his name from the balcony overhead.
“Yes!” he answered. “What is it?”
“I wondered where you had gone,” she called down. “I just missed you.”
“He’s telling me a story,” said the girl, looking up.
“He ought to be seeing these things of Kano Masanobi,” her aunt replied.
“You are awfully good to worry about me,” he said. “My mind isn’t worth it.”