"You won't tell that I tried to do it?" said Kitty.
"No, darling Kitty; but I must take the laudanum away at once."
Mollie's lips were trembling; her strong frame was shaken to its depths. Kitty pointed to a shelf over her bed where a small bottle of laudanum stood. Mollie put it into her pocket. Then she tried to make her sister more comfortable, and talked to her cheerily. When Katherine Hunt arrived, Mollie left her in that young lady's charge, and went downstairs. Her firm nerves were upset. Still, her resolution was fixed to have nothing to do with Major Strause. He was coming for his answer that night; she would not have an interview with him. She went back to the hospital, and wrote him a short note,—
"Don't trouble me any more. Go your own wicked way. God will protect the innocent.
"NURSE MOLLIE."
This note she gave to an orderly, to deliver to the major when he made his appearance. She did not even ask the orderly whether he had come, or whether the note had been given to him; but she did not get it back again.
The next few days passed quietly. There were no messages from the outside world. Rations grew shorter. The stricken town lay quiet, preparing for its death agonies. After a hurried consultation, it was decided to kill only three hundred of the cavalry horses, and to turn the others out on to the flat beyond the racecourse, and let them survive if they could. This was done; and several of the soldiers said that it was one of the most pitiable events in all the war to see the astonishment and terror of the horses, particularly when they were not allowed to come home to their accustomed lines at night. The poor creatures looked like skeletons, and had scarcely strength to hold themselves upright. At night they came back in groups, hoping to get their food and grooming as usual. They had to be driven away by Basutos with long whips; and then they seemed to recognize that it was useless, and wont wearily back to spend the night on the bare hillside. They were too weak and wanting in energy even to look for fodder.
Meanwhile death was busy. Men fell ill daily and hourly. More died from enteric and dysentery and sunstroke than from wounds. Chevral, a preparation of horse meat, was now in daily use. At first the sick and wounded refused to touch it, but afterwards they took it greedily; and it seemed to stem the tide of mortal illness, and to bring back strength.
Mollie had not seen her sister since the dreadful evening when she found her half poisoned in her room. Katherine Hunt gave up nursing the soldiers for the sake of one weak and troublesome girl whom she, in a fit of generosity, had brought to Ladysmith. How often in the days that were at hand did she regret this step!
Meanwhile the major was, to all appearance, silent. What he did only God and his own conscience knew. Nevertheless, it takes but a little whisper to set an evil report circulating; and just about this time—in the midst of the danger, starvation, and anxiety—there was spoken of in the Royal Hotel, at the officers' mess, and wherever groups of Englishmen congregated together, a curious rumour, sufficiently out of the common, even in a moment like the present, to arouse attention. The days were long gone by when any one smiled or laughed much in Ladysmith; the days for recreation, football, races, or any other amusements no longer existed. But the time is never too gloomy for an evil report to find its listeners, and the report now in circulation gained in strength and credence day by day. It had something to do with Gavon Keith. Brave, fearless, handsome Gavon, already recommended for his V.C., had done something shady, very shady in the past. He did not look the thing a bit; even his enemies acknowledged that. He had a clear eye, a frank gaze, an upright look. He did not drink, nor even smoke, to excess. He was unselfish, and willing to share any small comforts he himself possessed with his men. Where his own life was concerned he was reckless. To save a company of his men in the last sortie, he had himself crossed the plain in order to draw off the attention of the enemy and let his men get under cover. The bullets had rained like hail all round him, but none had touched him; and he had got back again to shelter, having done what he intended to do, without so much as a scratch.