"Go get the sergeant," he said at last, speaking more calmly.
When the man had gone Bob took the opportunity to visit Bertrand, whom he found asleep with his untasted breakfast beside him, the blankets tossed about his cot bearing witness to a troubled night. Bob touched his hand and felt it hot and dry. He went softly out and found the sergeant awaiting him.
"Where is the doctor?" was Bob's first inquiry.
"He will come," the sergeant assured him, with such certainty that Bob felt there was some reason to believe him.
He pointed across to the canteen, saying firmly, "I will buy a blanket now."
No objection was raised to this, and he decided that it was probably just what was expected of him. At the canteen he found a small stock of thin, gray blankets, one of which he bought, reluctantly paying for it twelve francs out of his remaining thirty-seven. He bought, also, for seven more francs, a cotton shirt, a razor, and another loaf of bread.
As they recrossed the yard twenty minutes later, through the midst of a crowd of Russians, Bob saw an officer coming out of Bertrand's room. He quickened his steps on the sergeant's informing him that this was the Herr Doctor who had come as promised. Bob met him in the narrow space before the barrack and spoke eagerly, after a quick bow of salutation, which the other gravely returned.
"Captain Bertrand—do you think he is any better?"
The military doctor surrendered the leather case he carried to an orderly who followed him and looked attentively at Bob, seeming more struck by his atrocious German than by what he had said. He was a gray-haired, shrewd-looking man, with a quiet, self-contained manner. In a moment he said in English:
"I can speak English a little. What would you say?"