“Ah! you know the country, then?” said Mohun.
“Perfectly well.”
“What are you looking at?”
“That hill yonder, shut in by a thicket. There is a house there.”
And I spurred on, followed by Mohun. In five minutes we reached the brush-fence; our horses easily cleared it, and we rode up the hill toward the desolate-looking mansion.
I surveyed it intently. It was unchanged, save that the porch seemed rotting away, and the window-shutters about to fall—that on the window to the right hung by a single hinge. It was the one through which I had looked in August, 1862. There was the same door through which I had burst in upon Fenwick and his companion.
I dismounted, threw my bridle over a stunted shrub, and approached the house. Suddenly I stopped.
At ten paces from me, in a little group of cedars, a man was kneeling on a grave, covered with tangled grass. At the rattle of my sabre he rose, turned round—it was Mordaunt.
In a moment we had exchanged a pressure of the hand; and then turning to the grave:—
“That is the last resting-place of poor Achmed,” he said; adding, in his deep, grave voice:—