CHAPTER XXXV.
HOW WE HEARD STRANGE NEWS "Whatever is it all, Phil ?" whispered Carette as we ate.
"There has evidently been fighting outside, and he has got a knock on the head, and his wits are astray." But that strange thing he had said ran in my head, and made such play there that I began to be troubled about it.
You must remember I had never heard the name of Paul Martel, and of my father I knew nothing save that he was dead.

So that this strange word of George Hamon's was to me but empty vapouring brought on by that blow on the head.

But against that there was the tremendous fact which had so exercised my mind, that this man Torode had spared my life at risk of his own, when every other soul that could have perilled him had been slaughtered in cold blood.
If--the awful import of that little word!--if there was--if there could be, any sense in George Hamon's words, the puzzle of Torode's strange treatment of me was explained.

I saw that clearly enough, but yet the whole matter held no sense of reality to me.

It was all as obscure and shadowy as the dim cross-lights in which we sat, and ate because we were starving.
Torode lay like a log, breathing slowly, but with no other sign of life.
George Hamon presently knelt beside him again and gazed long into his face, and then examined his wound carefully.