"Oh, dear, no! That would have been to waste ammunition. A limb was
hacked off, and they bled to death."
His mother was looking at the speaker with all her eyes, but she did not
hear a word he said. Was he pale or not?
Diana shuddered.
"And that is _stopped_--forever?" Her eyes were on the speaker.
"As long as our flag flies there," said the soldier, simply.
Her look kindled. For a moment she was the shadow, the beautiful shadow,
of her old Imperialist self--the proud, disinterested lover of
her country.
The doctor shook his head.
"Don't forget the gin, and the gin-traders on the other side, Master
Hugh."
"They don't show their noses in the new provinces," said the young man,
quietly; "we shall straighten that out too, in the long
run--you'll see."
But Diana had ceased to listen. Mrs. Roughsedge, turning toward her, and
with increasing foreboding, saw, as it were, the cloud of an inward
agony, suddenly recalled, creep upon the fleeting brightness of her
look, as the evening shade mounts upon and captures a sunlit hill-side.
The mother, in spite of her native optimism, had never cherished any
real hope of her son's success.
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