“I’m afraid I don’t look very fit,” I murmured. I must have cut a sorry figure, indeed, I expect; my clothes rough and torn, begrimed with dirt and smeared here and there with blood, my head swathed in a bandage, and my face pale to whiteness above and blackened below with my sprouting beard.
“I wish you could laugh at me. It would do me a power of good.”
“Laugh! Burgwan!” she said, her lips trembling. She put out her hand. “Let me help you. Lean on me.”
“As if I wanted any help,” I laughed, and making an effort, I started toward the horse I was to mount, only to stagger badly after half a dozen steps. In a moment her arm was under mine.
“You see,” she exclaimed, in quick distress.
But I laughed. “Coward, to gloat over my fallen pride. I only tripped over something.”
“Lean on me,” was all she said.
“Are you really fit to travel, Burgwan?” asked Karasch.
“Get me on to the horse. I can ride when I can’t walk.”
“I think you should stay here,” he declared.