“Oh, Samson!”
“Well, sir, that’s better than your head being off you.”
“Then you are sure I did my duty?”
“Duty, sir? Yes; that’s what I was going to tell you. The big six-foot sergeant who fetched you off your horse with a great cut of his heavy sword was up here yesterday to see you; and I heered him say to himself, ‘Poor boy! I feel ashamed of myself for cutting him down. What would his poor mother say to me if she knew?’”
“I can lie patiently now till I get well,” said Fred, after a pause. “I was frightened by my thoughts, Samson.”
“Yes; them’s what frightens most of us, sir.”
“I mean by the thought that I had not done my duty by my charge.”
“But you did, sir; and it’s the fortune o’ war. They was prisoners the other day; now we’re prisoners this day.”
“And Master Scarlett Markham, and your brother, and the other men?”
“All here, sir. There’s about a thousand of the enemy about, waiting, I suppose, to drop upon our side, if our side doesn’t drop upon them. Fortune o’ wars sir—fortune o’ war.”