Walking on beside him I managed to tell him hurriedly, what we had heard of Cuthbert. 'Was there a chance of his ever coming back?'
'Why not?' he answered, in his careless, jolly voice. 'I don't know why he shouldn't. We're not all killed, you see, that go for soldiers. Ah! it's a fine life, my lads,'—this to the two boys who were still following him. 'No life like it,' and so on.
Those lightly-spoken words of his, the only ones of encouragement I had ever heard, fell upon me like a blow, and struck me speechless.
'Then you think that he may be living yet,' I asked again, presently.
'You there still!' He looked back good-humouredly. 'Well, there's no knowing. I can't say.'
'He was reported missing.'
'Ah! reported missing, that sounds bad. Still, I've known stranger things come round. Where was he killed, say you?'
'At the battle of Conjeveram, I think they called the place.'
'Conjeveram—seems to me I've heard a talk of prisoners taken there, but the outlandish Indian names are all alike. It's a chance, I tell you. Now, then.'
He had no more time for me. I went home with a beating heart, to tell Hildred. She was sitting in the honeysuckle-shaded porch of Clifford's house, spinning. The bees hummed in the sunshine, the waterfall splashed, Clifford's children were shouting at the river's edge, and Hildred was singing a low murmur of song that blended with the whirr of her wheel and the buzzing of the bees.