Stay a bit, though, here's a watch!" and he pulled me softly out of the pocket.

As he did so I looked up at him.

Surely I knew his face! Surely somewhere I had seen that troubled frightened face before! Then I remembered Seatown Gaol! Could this be Tom Drift here in India, and kneeling beside his old schoolfellow's body?
It was indeed Tom Drift! But he neither recognised me nor the wounded man before him; indeed he was too busy examining the latter's wound to look very closely at his face.

As he removed the waistcoat he uttered an exclamation of astonishment.
"A most wonderful thing," he said; "the bullet, which must have been a spent one, has struck his watch and turned aside.

A most wonderful escape!" And then he produced a box of instruments, with one of which he probed the wound, and after some trouble extracted the bullet.