CHAPTER XV.

REST IN PERNAMBUCO

Miss Tetson and Mr. Valentine Hicks were married in the little English church in Pernambuco. The ex-President gave the bride away, the ex-commander-in-chief supported the groom, and the major supported the clergyman officiating. Mrs. McPhey supplied the wedding breakfast, and McPhey made all the speeches. Then the Tetsons and Hicks sailed away for New York, leaving Herbert Hemming to nurse Mr. O'Rourke and Smith.

The invalids were housed in cool rooms in the McPhey mansion, on the outskirts of the city, and they and Hemming were guests of honour for as long as they would stay in the country.

O'Rourke's leg was in a bad way, but poor Smith's neck was in a worse. For the first week of his attendance the clever American surgeon who had them both in charge felt anxious enough for the valet's life. But modern methods and unflagging care won the day, and a wound that, in the time of the Crimean War, meant certain death, left nothing but a sunken white scar.

A couple of months passed quietly. Hemming worked at a series of short stories, and learned the gaudy-coloured, easy-going city by heart. He received several letters from Hicks, and heard that the diamond had been sold at a good price. O'Rourke pulled on his riding-boots again, and exercised McPhey's stable, night and morning.

Hemming's white stallion was once more an inmate of this stable. Smith recovered his strength slowly, and spent his days in easeful meditations and unnamed regrets for the good time of fighting and comradeship.

One day, Captain Santosa (who, through the influence of McPhey and the major, had procured a commission in the cavalry regiment stationed in Pernambuco) brought news of Penthouse's death to Hemming. Penthouse had been found in a dying condition in the hut of a poor woman, on the trail above Pernamba, by a party of government troops. He had been shot during the attack upon the President's villa, and, crawling away from the fight, had been found by the peasant woman, and tended by her through his weeks of suffering. She had explained to the officer in command that an Englishman had been kind to her, and for his sake she had housed and nursed this other Englishman. Thus, through Hemming's kindness, had his enemy received kindness.

END OF PART II.

PART THREE