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 \AQys! you 

 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 



