212 The Light That Failed readin’ him about Stocks, Alf?” “No; it was all about fightin’ out there where the soldiers is gone — a great long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words in it. E give me ‘arf a crown because I read so well. And ’e says the next time there’s anything ’e wants read ’e’ll send for me.” “That’s good hearing, but I do think for all the halfcrown — put it into the kicking-donkey moneybox, Alf, and let me see you do it — he might have kept you longer. Why, he couldn’t have begun to understand how beautiful you read.” “He’s best left to hisself— gentlemen always are when they’re downhearted,” said Mr. Beeton. Alfs rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow’s special correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy’s nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the wind of the desert. That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him, offering for proof that he was worthy of this favor the fact that he had not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humor and no special virtue had kept him alive. Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as well as a weak-kneed confession of fear. “Just for the fun of the thing,” he said to the cat, who had taken Binkie’s place in his establishment, “I should like to know how long this is going to last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for me. I must have two or three thousand at least in the Bank — twenty or thirty years more provided for,