“Despatches, captain,” he says, holding up the captain’s letter to Colonel Maine. “They didn’t get that. They were too many for me. I dropped one, though, with my pistol, and cut my way through the others.”
As he spoke, I untwisted his leather sword-knot, which was cutting into his wrist, for his hacked and blood-stained sabre was hanging from his hand.
“Wouldn’t go back into the scabbard,” he said faintly; and then with a harsh gasp: Water—water!
He revived then a bit; and as Captain Dyer and Mrs Bantem between them were attending to, and binding up his wounds, he told us how he had been set upon ten miles off, and been obliged to fight his way back; and, poor chap, he had fought; for there were no less than ten lance-wounds in his arms, thighs, and chest, from a slight prick up to a horrible gash, deep and long enough, it seemed to me, to let out half-a-dozen poor fellows’ souls.
Just in the middle of it, I saw Captain Dyer start and look strange, for there was a shadow came across where we were kneeling; and the next instant he was standing between Miss Ross and the wounded man.
“Pray, go, dear Elsie; this is no place for you,” I heard him whisper to her.
“Indeed, Lawrence,” she whispered, “am I not a soldier’s daughter? I ought to say this is no place for you. Go, and make your arrangements for our defence.”
I don’t think any one but me saw the look of love she gave him as she took sponge and lint from his hand, pressing it as she did so, and then her pale face lit up with a smile as she met his eyes; the next moment she was kneeling by the wounded trooper, and in a quiet firm way helping Mrs Bantem, in a manner that made her, poor woman, stare with astonishment.
“God bless you, my darling,” she whispered to her, as soon as they had done, and the poor fellow was lying still—a toss-up with him whether it should be death or life; and I saw Mrs Bantem take Miss Ross’s soft white hand between her two great rough hard palms, and kiss it just once.
“And I’d always been abusing and running her down for a fine madam, good for nothing but to squeak songs, and be looked at,” Mrs Bantem said to me, a little while after. “Why, Isaac Smith, we shall be having that little maid shewing next that there’s something in her.”