Kilgariff had no need to apply for a leave of absence. The wound in his neck had been behaving badly for ten days past, and it was now very angry indeed. Day by day a field-surgeon had treated it, to no effect. So far from growing better, it had grown steadily worse.
Under the night-and-day strain of his ceaseless war work, Kilgariff had grown emaciated, and so far enfeebled as to add greatly to the danger threatened by the wound’s condition. On the morning of the day which brought him Dorothy’s letter, the surgeon had found his condition alarming, and had said to him:—
“Colonel, I have before advised you to go to a hospital and have this wound treated. Now I must use my authority as your medical officer and order you to go at once. If I did not compel that, the service would very soon lose a valuable officer.”
“Must it be a hospital, Doctor?” asked Kilgariff. “May I not run up to Wyanoke, instead, and get my friend Doctor Brent to treat me?”
“Capital! Nothing could be better. Besides, the hospitals are full to overflowing, and you’d get scant attention in most of them. Go to Wyanoke by all means, but go at once. I’ll give you a written order to go, and you can make it the basis of your application for sick leave. Act at once, and I’ll go myself to headquarters to impress everybody there with the urgency of the case and especially the necessity for promptitude. You ought to have your leave granted by to-morrow morning.”
It was granted in fact earlier than that, so that before nightfall Kilgariff set out on a horse purchased from an officer of his acquaintance, a horse lean almost to emaciation, but strong, wiry, and full of spirit still. He was an animal in which blood did indeed “tell,” a grandson of that most enduring of racers, Red Eye.
“Give a good account of yourself, old fellow,” said Kilgariff to the animal, caressingly, “and I promise you better rations at Wyanoke than you have had for two months past.”
Whether the horse understood the promise or not, he acted as if he did, and with a long, swinging stride, left miles behind him rapidly.
It was a little past midnight when the well-nigh exhausted officer reached the hospitable plantation; but before going to the house, he aroused the negro who slept on guard at the stables, and himself remained there till the half-sleeping serving-man had thoroughly groomed the animal and placed an abundance of corn and fodder in his manger and rack.
Then the way-worn traveller went to the house, entered by the never closed front door, and made his way to a bedroom, without waking any member of the family.