The note was in pencil, characteristically brief, and ran thus:--
"Here is the man I spoke of. He ought to be good material for
you."
For a moment I sat looking from the note to the man, and sounding
the "dim perilous depths" of my memory for the meaning of this
mysterious communication. The good "material," however, soon
relieved my embarrassment by putting his hand on his waistcoat,
coming toward me, and saying, "It is just here, you can feel it."
It was not necessary for me to do so. In a flash I remembered that
my medical friend had told me of a certain poor patient, once a
soldier, who, among his other trials and uncertainties, was
afflicted with an aneurism caused by the buckle of his knapsack
pressing upon the arch of the aorta. It was liable to burst at any
shock or any moment. The poor fellow's yoke had indeed been too
heavy.
In the presence of such a tremendous possibility I think for an
instant I felt anxious only about myself. What I should do; how
dispose of the body; how explain the circumstance of his taking
off; how evade the ubiquitous reporter and the coroner's inquest;
how a suspicion might arise that I had in some way, through
negligence or for some dark purpose, unknown to the jury,
precipitated the catastrophe, all flashed before me.
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