“No,” said the doctor quietly, “for he had lost his pistol, perhaps in the fight; but it seems to me, Dickenson, that in his agony of shame, despair, and madness, he tried to hang himself.”
“Tried to do what?” roared Dickenson.
“What I say, my dear boy,” said the doctor gravely.
“I say, doctor, have you been too much in the sun?” said Dickenson, with a forced laugh, one which sounded painful in the extreme.
“No, my dear fellow; I am perfectly calm, and everything points to the fact—his state when you found him, sorrowful, repentant, and utterly exhausted by his sufferings in his struggles to get back to face it out like a man.”
“Doctor, you are raving. His appearance was all compatible with a struggle, fighting with the Boers—a prisoner bravely fighting for his escape. Everything points to your fact? Nonsense, sir—absurd!”
“You’re a brave, true-hearted fellow, Dickenson, my lad, and I like you none the less for being so rude to me in your defence of your poor friend. He must be sleeping now after the dose I gave him. Come with me, and I’ll give you a surprise.”
“Not such a one as you have already given me, doctor,” said the young man bitterly.
“We shall see,” said the doctor quietly; and the next minute he was standing by Lennox’s side, carefully lifting a moistened bandage laid close to his neck.
Dickenson uttered a faint cry of horror. For deeply marked in his friend’s terribly swollen neck there was a deep blue mark such as would have been caused by a tightened cord, and in places the skin was torn away, leaving visible the eroded flesh.