Raikes was placed on the seat of the gun-carriage, buckled thereto with straps, and muffled up as well as we could devise, to protect him from the cold. The two hussars left me, and then we were alone, he and I—Valentine Raikes and Bob Twyford—in the solitary valley, through which the road wound that led to Balaclava.
Though coarse and fiery, the raki partially revived the sinking man, and, leaving my saddle, I asked him, in a voice husky with cold and emotion, if he knew me.
But he shook his head sadly and listlessly. And bearded as I was then, it was no wonder that his dimmed vision failed to recognize me.
"I am Robert Twyford, the bombardier, whose plighted wife you stole, Valentine Raikes! God judge between you and me; but I feel that I must forgive you now."
"My winding sheet is woven in the loom of hell!" he moaned, in a low and almost inarticulate voice. "Oh! Twyford, I have wronged you—and her—and—many, many more."
"But Bessie!" said I, drawing near, and propping him in my arms; "what came of Bessie Leybourne? Speak—tell me for mercy's sake, while you have the power!"
"Ask the waters—the waters——"
"Where—where?"
"Under Blackfriars-bridge. She perished there on the 27th of last September."
The 27th was the night of the storm—the night of the mysterious drowning cry, which startled me from sleep!