He lost not a moment in visiting John Garnet, whom he found sitting up in an easy-chair, half-dressed, but so swathed in bandages that he could hardly move.
Dismissing Waif, who was in attendance as usual, he laid a finger on his patient's wrist, and marked the strong full beat of the pulse in grave approval.
"How much longer are you going to keep me here?" exclaimed John Garnet, with some impatience. "I've been telling Waif, for the last three days, I am as strong as I ever was in my life."
"Get up," replied the doctor, "and lift that chair from the floor. So. Do you feel as if a dog were licking a raw place in your side?"
"I feel that I ought to be in the saddle," replied the other, "a hundred miles from your close, smoky town. If it wasn't for these cursed bandages, I should never know that I had a side at all."
"Off with them, then!" said Katerfelto, suiting the action to the word by unwinding their folds. "See now the fruits of a little knowledge and a little patience. These wounds have healed, as we call it, at the first intention. Do not be so ready with bare steel again; or, if you must needs brawl, keep your sword-arm bent, and your point moving in a narrower circle."
John Garnet's eyes brightened with pleasure, but his face fell a moment afterwards.
"You have restored me to life," said he, "and I cannot even pay you a surgeon's fee. I tell you plainly, I have not ten guineas in the world."
"We are comrades in the same service," answered the Doctor, quietly. "There is no question of guineas between you and me. Will you ride a hundred miles on an errand, in which we are equally interested, and cry quits?"