Just what the doctor meant to do Bob was far from feeling sure, and Sergeant Cameron had little to say, after his five weeks' experience with German promises which lacked the merit of ever being performed.
At five o'clock that afternoon Bob heard the guard at his door, and rising from a dreary revery by Bertrand's side, he went to meet him. Sergeant Cameron was due with his supper and Bob was anxious for a word with him. Their patient was still just lingering on the borderland of unconsciousness. Sergeant Cameron was not yet there, but behind the guard came four soldiers, stretcher-bearers, who advanced stolidly into the little room with their unwieldy burden.
Bob's heart gave a sudden strange pang. The longed-for relief had come, but it was not so easy now to see his comrade of the long weeks just passed go out among strangers, too ill to wish him even a word of farewell. Almost dazed he stood aside, while the doctor followed in the stretcher-bearers' wake, and ordered the French officer lifted from the cot. Then Bob sprang forward and helped with gentle hands that shook a little as he adjusted the blankets for the last time over his friend's thin shoulders. He said huskily to the doctor, "You'll do your best for him, won't you, Herr Doctor?"
The German gave a nod of assent, but said nothing more. He gave Bob an odd glance once or twice, and seemed more than ordinarily severe and constrained, giving the soldiers short, sharp orders which they made haste to obey. Bob said no more to him, and in another moment Bertrand had been carried out, and he was left alone.
He sat down, looking at the empty cot, and mumbled angrily to himself, in the midst of his black depression, "Don't be an ass. Buck up! What a slacker you are, anyway—can't you grin and bear it, as other fellows do?" And all the while he was wondering painfully at his own weakness, and despising it, yet utterly unable to rise above it, or to take his imprisonment courageously as only one of the many evil chances of war. When Sergeant Cameron came in at last he was still struggling with himself, and not even the sergeant's cheerful words of thankfulness that poor Bertrand was at last to be placed in competent hands—or so they hoped—could bring a ray of brightness to Bob's weary brain. He drank some of his bitter coffee and went to bed—free for the first time in weeks to sleep the night through without rising to see if Bertrand slept—but this night he lay awake and wished for even the sick man's companionship.
When the first streaks of dawn stole through the little window Bob sat up and looked curiously at the ashes on the hearth. His fire was out—that was the curious part of it, because he was not cold, though the window pane was covered with frost and his breath puffed into vapor.
"I'm hot—hot as anything," he muttered, rubbing one hand over his aching forehead. "Funny, for I was cold enough all night." He lay down again to ponder it.
When Sergeant Cameron came with his breakfast Bob was still lying on the cot. The sergeant laid down the bowl of coffee and the armful of wood he carried to look keenly at the young officer's flushed checks, as he lay blanketless in the cold room. "Don't feel well, Lieutenant?" he faltered, trying to speak naturally, but reaching for Bob's hand as he spoke and starting at the burning dryness of it.
"Queer," said Bob, trying to emerge from the dim, feverish phantoms that obscured his thoughts, "but I'll be better after a while." He spoke more cheerfully than he had done the night before. All present worries had suddenly faded from his mind. He could not seem to think of anything but what was very vague and far away.