For a long time Somers kept his mouth shut; but at last he began to talk.  The ugly rumour spread.  It even reached my battery which was a hundred miles away; for Johnny Dacre, one of my subs, had a brother in Boyce’s old regiment.  For my own part I scouted the story as soon as I heard it, and I withered up young Dacre for daring to bring such abominable slander within my Rhadamanthine sphere.  I dismissed the calumny from my mind.  Providentially, (as I heard later), the news came of Boyce’s “mention,” and Somers was set down as a liar.  The poor devil was had up before the Colonel and being an imaginative and nervous man denied the truth of the rumour and by dexterous wriggling managed to exculpate himself from the charge of being its originator.

I must, parenthetically, crave indulgence for these apparently irrelevant details.  But as, in this chronicle, I am mainly concerned with the career of Leonard Boyce, I have no option but to give them.  They are necessary for a conception of the character of a remarkable man to whom I have every reason and every honourable desire to render justice.  It is necessary, too, that I should state clearly the manner in which I happened to learn the facts of the affair at Vilboek’s Farm, for I should not like you to think that I have given a credulous ear to idle slander.

It was in Cape Town, whither I had been despatched, on a false alarm of enteric.  I was walking with Johnny Dacre up Adderley Street, dun with kahki, when he met his brother Reginald, who was promptly introduced to Johnny’s second in command.  Reggie was off to hospital to see one of his men who had been badly hurt.

“It’s the chap,” he said to his brother, “who was with Boyce through that shady affair at Vilboek’s Farm.”

“I don’t know why you call it a shady affair,” said I, somewhat acidly.  “I know Captain Boyce—­he is a near neighbour of mine at home—­and he has proved himself to be a gallant officer and a brave man.”

The young fellow reddened.  “I’m awfully sorry, sir.  I withdraw the word ‘shady.’  But this poor chap has something on his mind, and everyone has a down on him.  He led a dog’s life till he was knocked out, and he has been leading a worse one since.  I don’t call it fair.”  He looked at me squarely out of his young blue eyes—­the lucky devil, he is commanding his regiment now in Flanders, with the D.S.O. ribbon on his tunic.  “Will you come with me and see him, sir?”

“Certainly,” said I, for I had nothing to do, and the boy’s earnestness impressed me.

On our way he told me of such mixture of rumour and fact as he was acquainted with.  It was then that I heard the man Somers’s name for the first time.  We entered the hospital, sat by the side of the man’s bed, and he told us the story of Vilboek’s Farm which I have, in bald terms, just related.  Shortly afterwards I returned to the front, where the famous shell knocked me out of the Army forever.