THE DOUBLE ALIBI 157 



and he fell half-fainting on the grass, convulsed 

 by a terrible cough. My first care was to give 

 him whiskey, by perhaps a mistaken impulse of 

 humanity ; my next, as he lay exhausted, was to 

 bring water in my hat, and remove the black mud 

 from his face. 



Then I saw Percy Allen Allen of St. Jude's ! 

 His face was wasted, his thin long beard (he had 

 not worn a beard of old), clogged as it was with 

 peat-stains, showed flecks of grey. 



'Allen Percy!' I said; 'what wind blewjw* 

 here ? ' 



But he did not answer ; and, as he coughed, 

 it was too plain that the shock of his accident had 

 broken some vessel in the lungs. I tended him 

 as well as I knew how to do it. I sat beside him, 

 giving him what comfort I might, and all the 

 time my memory flew back to college days, and 

 to our strange and most unhappy last meeting, 

 and his subsequent inevitable disgrace. Far away 

 from here Loch Nan and the vacant moors my 

 memory wandered. 



It was at Blocksby's auction-room, in a street 



