“You are wounded!” cried a strangled voice, and in an instant his comrade was on her knees beside him, her face pale, her lips working. “And you did not tell me! Oh, cruel, cruel!”
There was that in the voice, in the eyes, in the trembling lips which sent Stewart’s heart leaping into his throat. But, by a mighty effort, he kept his arms from around her.
“Nonsense!” he said, as lightly as he could. “That’s not a wound—it is just a scratch. This one across my cheek hurts a blamed sight worse! If I could only wash it——”
“There is a little stream back yonder,” she said, and sprang to her feet. “Come! Or perhaps you cannot walk!” and she put her arms around him to help him up.
He rose with a laugh.
“Really,” he protested, “I don’t see how a scratch on the shoulder could affect my legs!”
But she refused to make a jest of it.
“The blood—it frightens me. Are you very weak?” she asked, anxiously, holding tight to him, as though he might collapse at any instant.
“If I am,” said Stewart, “it is from want of food, not from loss of blood. I haven’t lost a spoonful. Ah, here’s the brook!”
He knelt beside it, while she washed the blood from his handkerchief and tenderly bathed the injured shoulder. Stewart watched her with fast-beating heart. Surely she cared; surely there was more than friendly concern in that white face, in those quivering lips. Well, very soon now, he could put it to the touch. He trembled at the thought: would he win or lose?