[CHAPTER XX.]
TREACHERY.
THE young Greek had had a narrow escape with his life. Two wounds—one on the head, producing a severe concussion of the brain; the other on the thigh, causing an almost fatal loss of blood—had well-nigh finished his career. For nearly forty-eight hours he remained in a state of complete unconsciousness; then the brain slowly began to resume its functions. But the weakness of extreme exhaustion still continued. He lay for days dimly conscious of his existence, but content to accept his surroundings, to swallow the food and drink which were offered him, and to sleep without asking any questions.
Then a certain curiosity began to awake in him. The place in which he found himself was unfamiliar, and he lazily wondered where he was. The voices about him were strange—his sight was still too weak to distinguish faces—and the speech which they used was strange. His first attempt to move was followed by a feeling of absolute helplessness; his first effort at speech produced a sound so far-away that he hardly recognized his own voice.
It was on the morning of the seventh day, after an unusually long and refreshing sleep, that he felt equal to the task of realizing where he was. The physician, who luckily happened to be paying him his morning visit, at once recognized the improvement in his patient.
"Hush!" he said, when the young man attempted to speak. "Be quiet till you have had some food. You are better, I see, but you want some refreshment. Then you may ask questions, and listen to what is told you, but only for as long as I allow."
He clapped his hands, and an attendant entered the room, carrying a cup of broth which had been fortified with a cordial. Cleanor, who was still so helpless that he had to be fed like an infant, swallowed it with an excellent appetite, and was sorry when the last spoonful had been administered.
"Good!" said the man of science; "we have positively brought a little red into your cheeks. You shall have another allowance when that has run itself out three times;" and he turned, as he spoke, a water-clock which stood on a table by the bedside. "Meanwhile, you can receive a friend who has been waiting for some days to renew his acquaintance with you."
He nodded to the attendant, and the man pushed aside the curtain which hung over the entrance to the tent. The next moment the expected visitor appeared. Cleanor recognized in him the young officer, kinsman to Scipio, whose life he had saved in the attack on the Megara.