"Ain't I made it cl'ar from the start," cried Pop angrily, "thet I ain't a-goin' to be druv out? You-uns kin call me muley-headed or whatever you've a mind to. Sal's always stood by me, and by golly, I'm a-goin' to stand by Sal!"
His raised voice roused the patient, and a feeble summons brought Miss Fletcher to the bedside.
"Say," plead the girl faintly, "don't rile Pop. He's the—fightenest man—in—Breathitt—when his blood's—up."
"All right, dear," said Miss Fletcher, with a soothing hand on the hot brow; "he shall do as he likes."
During that long night the girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep. During the quiet moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never relaxing the vigilance of his watch. For Pop was doing sentry duty, much as he had done it in the old days of the Civil War, when he had answered Lincoln's first call for volunteers and given his left arm for his country.
But the enemy to-night was mysterious, crafty, one that might come in the twinkling of an eye, and a sentry at seventy is not what he was at twenty-two. When the doctor arrived in the morning he found the old man haggard with fatigue.
"This won't do, Mr. Hawkins," he said kindly; "you must get some rest."
"Be she goin' to die?" Pop demanded, steadying himself by a chair.
"It is too soon to tell," the doctor said evasively; "but I'll say this much, her pulse is better than I expected. Now, go get some sleep."
Half an hour later a strange rumbling sound puzzled the nurses in Ward B. It came at regular intervals, rising from a monotonous growl to a staccato, then dying away in a plaintive diminuendo. It was not until one of the nurses needed clean sheets that the mystery was explained. On the floor of the linen closet, stretched on his back with his carpet sack under his head and his empty sleeve across his chest, lay Pop!