The listener stifled down a groan. Ah, dear thoughts of long ago! Such things had never happened on the mimic battlefields at Brenlands. This, then, was the reality.
"Jack, I want you to promise me something—your word of honour to a dying man."
A fit of coughing, ending in a groan of agony, interrupted the request.
"Don't talk too much," answered the other in a broken voice. "What is it you want? I'll do anything for you, God knows!"
"I want you to promise that you'll take this ring to Queen Mab—and give it to her with your own hands. Say that I remembered her always—and carried my love for her with me down into the grave. Promise me that you will give it her—yourself!"
Valentine ceased speaking, exhausted with the effort.
"I will, I will!" returned the other, taking the ring. "But don't talk about dying, Val; you'll pull through right enough."
The sufferer answered with a feeble shake of his head, and another terrible fit of coughing left him faint and gasping for breath.
"Stay with me," he whispered.
Jack propped him up to ease his breathing, and wiped the blood from his pallid lips. For a long, long time he sat silently holding the hand of his dying friend; then, fight against it as he would, exhausted nature began to assert herself in an overpowering desire to sleep. Numbed with cold, and wellnigh heart-broken, wretched in body and mind, jealous of the moments as they flew past and of the lessening opportunity of proving his love by any trifling service it might be in his power to render—in spite of all this, an irresistible drowsiness crept over him, and his head fell forward on his knees.