With a slight start he turned and looked at his charge.
Alexander Lyon was lying awake and calmly contemplating his physician.
Doctor Dietz dropped his paper and bent over his charge.
“You are better?” he said, quietly.
Alexander nodded.
“How do you feel?”
“Weak.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Two—or three—hours—I think. I don’t know,” whispered Alick, feebly and with pain and difficulty.
“Oh no!” said the surgeon, taking out his watch and consulting it—“not near so long as that, though it may seem so to you; not more than fifteen or twenty minutes at the most.”