“Be quiet, Marion. He is in the right hands. No, doctor, we will have no one else called in.”
A low moan from the wounded man took Chester’s attention, and he knelt down again to bathe his face and lips with brandy, while the two gentlemen went to a door at the other end, passed out, and a low, hurried dispute arose, all in whispers.
Chester heard a word or two—angry words—and grasped the fact that there must have been some desperate quarrel, ending in the unfortunate man before him being shot down. A chair was overturned, and glasses and decanters upset, as if from a struggle. But the patient was apparently slipping away, and for hour after hour through that night Chester fought the grim Spectre, striving to tear the victim from his hands, seeing nothing, nothing, nothing, forgetting everything—home, Isabel, the anxious woman at his side. His every nerve was strung to the fight, and at last he felt that he had won.
His face showed it as he rose, uttering a sigh of relief, and his fellow-watcher at the other side of the couch sprang from her knees, caught his hands in hers, and kissed them passionately, while the rest of the company came slowly back into the room.
“Then he’ll live, doctor?” whispered the gentleman the others had addressed as Jem.
“I hope so. He is sleeping easily now. I will come back about nine. There is not likely to be any change. If there is, of course I must be fetched.”
“Have some refreshment, doctor,” said the gentleman he addressed. “You must not leave him.”
Wearied out as he was, this was enough to irritate Chester.
“I am the best judge of that, sir,” he said coldly. “Of course the patient must not be left.”
“That is what we all feel, doctor. Ask what fee you please, but you must stay.”