E. W. Hornung: A Thief in the Night

9. The Raffles Relics (continued)

Was he thinking even then of volunteering for the front? Had he already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his life - nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and shall never know. Yet his words were strangely prophetic, even to the three or four weeks in which those events happened that imperilled the fabric of our empire, and rallied her sons from the four winds to fight beneath her banner on the veldt. It all. seems very ancient history now. But I remember nothing better or more vividly than the last words of Raffles upon his last crime, unless it be the pressure of his hand as he said them, or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.