But I was only in for six months: and my surprise is that I stopped so long. There was a beast of a sergeant—a strong fellow in his way who had been cock of the dunghill until I came—and after I'd thrashed him first with the single-sticks, and then with the gloves, and in a wrestling bout had given him a taste of our Cornish methods, he marked me out for special petty illtreatment. It came to a climax one day when a couple of dozen of us were sent off on a train journey. I left on the platform some bit of the gear. He noticed it and bringing it to the carriage window, flung it in at me and, with a sneer and a big coarse oath, cried:—"D'ye think I'm here to wet-nurse you, you damnation great baby?" And he waited a moment with the sneer still on his face: and he didn't wait in vain, either. Forgetting all about discipline and thinking only of his insult, I flung out my left and hit him fair on the mouth, sending him down like a ninepin. Then I picked up my things and went straight away to report myself to the officer in charge of us. There was a big row, with the result that the sergeant was reduced to the ranks, and I was allowed to buy myself out, being given plainly to understand that if I stayed in, my chance of a commission was as good as lost. This closed my army career.

For a few years I was at a loose end altogether—a man of action without a sphere. Then the natural result followed. I fell madly in love with my best friend's sister, Edith Balestier. I cursed my folly in having wasted my life, and filled the air with vows that I would set to work to increase my income of £250 a year to an amount such as would let me give her a home worthy of her. She loved me. I know that. But her mother didn't; and in the end, the mother won. Edith tossed me over ruthlessly, while I was away for a couple of months; and all in a hurry she married another man for his title and money.

It was only the old tale. I knew that well enough; but it seemed to break my last hope. Everything I'd ever really wanted, I'd always failed to get. I was like a lunatic; and vowed I'd kill myself after I'd punished the woman who'd done worse than kill me.

I thought out a scheme and played it shrewdly enough. I shut the resolve out of sight, and laughed and jibed as though I felt no wound. And I waited. The chance came surely enough. I went down to a dance at a place a bit out of town and took my revolver with me. After a waltz I led my Lady Cargill out into the shrubbery and when she least suspected what I was about, whipped out the weapon and told her what I was going to do. She knew me well enough to feel I was in deadly earnest; but she made no scene, such as another woman might. Her white beauty held my hand an instant, and in that time her husband, Sir Philip, came up. Then I had a flash of genius. I knew he was as jealous as a man could be and as he had known nothing of my relations with Edith, like many another self-sufficient idiot, he imagined she had loved him and no one else. I opened his eyes that night. Keeping him in control with the pistol, I made him hear the whole passionful story of her love for me from her own lips; and I shall never forget how the white of his craven fear changed to the dull grey of a sickened heart as he heard. At a stroke it killed my desire to kill. I had had a revenge a thousand times more powerful. I had made the wife see the husband's craven poltroonery, and the husband the wife's heart infidelity; and I let them live for their mutual distrust and punishment.

A month later I stood on the Moscow platform, my back turned on England for ever, my face turned war-wards, and my heart ready for any devilment that might offer, when my fate was tossed topsy-turvy into a cauldron of welcome dangers, promising death and certainly calculated to give me that distraction from my own troubles which I desired so keenly.

I was thus ready enough to take up my new character in earnest and play it to the end. If I were discovered, it could not mean more than death; while there were possibilities in it which might have very different results. War with Turkey was a certainty, and at such a time I should be able to find my sphere, and might be able to carve for myself a position.

It was clear that Alexis had so far been known as a very different man from the kind that produces good soldiers: but men sometimes reform suddenly, and the new Alexis would be cast in a quite different mould. The difficulty was to invent a pretext for the sudden change; and in regard to this a good idea occurred to me.

I resolved to say that I had had an ugly accident and a great fright, and to connect this with the shaving of my beard and moustache. To pretend that the mishap had effected as complete a change in my nature as in my appearance: as if my brain had been in some way affected. I mapped out a very boldly defined course of eccentric conduct which would be not altogether inconsistent with some such mental disturbance. I would be moody, silent, reserved, and yet subject to gusts and fits of uncontrollable passion and anger: desperate in all matters touching courage, and contemptuously intolerant of any kind of interference. I knew that my skill with the sword and pistol would soon win me respect and a reputation, while any mistakes I made would be set down to eccentricity. I was drawing from life—a French officer whom I had known stationed at Rouen: evidently a man with a past which no one even dared to question. I calculated that in this way I should make time to choose my permanent course.

I soon had an opportunity of setting to work.

The officer who, as Olga had told me, was to be my chief second in the morning, Lieutenant Essaieff, came to see me. He was immensely surprised at the change in my appearance, scanned me very curiously and indeed suspiciously, and asked the cause.

"Drink or madness?" he put it laconically, in that tone of contempt with which one speaks to a distrusted servant or a disliked acquaintance.

Even my friends held me cheap, it seemed.

"Neither drink nor madness, if you please," said I, very sternly, eyeing him closely. "But a miracle."

"And which of the devils is it this time, Petrovitch?" he asked, laughing lightly. "Gad, he must have been hard put to it. Or is it one of the she-devils, eh? You know plenty of those. Let's have the tale." He laughed again; but the mirth was not so genuine that time, and I could see that the effect of the fixed stare with which I regarded him began to tell.

"I'm in no mood for this folly," said I, very curtly. "Save for a miracle, I should now be a dead man. That's all. And I'll thank you not to jest about it."

He was serious now and asked:—"How did it happen?"

I made no answer, but sat staring moodily out in front of me, and yet contriving to watch him as he eyed me furtively now and again, in surprise at the change in me.

"Are you ill, Petrovitch?" he asked at length.

"Hell!" I burst out with the utmost violence, springing to my feet. "What is it to you?" And then with complete inconsequence I added:—"I was praying, and in answer a light flashed on me and would have consumed me wholly, but for a miracle. Half my clothes and my face-hair were consumed—and I was changed."

"Ah, prayer's a dangerous thing when you've a lot of arrears to make up," he said with a sneer.

I turned and looked at him coldly and threateningly.

"Lieutenant Essaieff, you have been good enough to lend me your services for this business to-morrow morning, but that gives you no title to insult me. After to-morrow you will be good enough to give me an explanation of your words."

He had risen and stood looking at me so earnestly that I half thought he suspected the change. But he did not.

"You will not be alive to demand it," he said, at length, contemptuously, clipping the words short in a manner that shewed me how angry he was and how much he despised me. "I'm only sorry I was fool enough to be persuaded to act for you," he added as he swung out of the room.