“Poor lad!” said the doctor kindly. “Why, he was as brave as a lion. I talked nonsense to keep up his spirits and make him indignant while I hurt him in that cruel way. Poor lad! Poor lad!”
“Doctor Chowne,” I cried with the tears in my eyes, “I felt just now as if I hated you!”
“Just you say that again!” he cried, laughing grimly. “You forget, you young dog, that I have you by the hip. You are my patient, and I have as tight a hold of you as an old baron in the good old times had of his prisoners. There! He is coming to, and I sha’n’t have to hurt him any more to-day.”
“Will he have to lose his leg, doctor?” I whispered.
“What! Because of that hole? Pshaw, boy! The bullet is out, and nature has begun already to pour out her healing stuff to make it grow together. I’ll make him as sound as a roach before I have done. Now we must see to getting our wounded under cover. I didn’t think the Gap would ever be turned into such a hospital as this. Why, Sep, it’s quite a treat to get such a morning’s practice in surgery. There! I’ll go and wash my hands, and I must have some breakfast or I shall starve.”
Breakfast! Starve! At such a time as this! I looked at him in horror, and he read my thoughts and laughed.
“Why, you young goose!” he exclaimed, “do you think I can afford to be miserable and have the horrors because other people suffer? Not a bit of it. I’m obliged to be well and hearty and—unfeeling—eh? Ah, well, Sep! I’m not such an unfeeling brute as I seem; and I’d give fifty pounds now to be able to find those poor fellows breakfast and shelter at once.”
The doctor was able to supply his patients with refreshments without the expenditure of fifty pounds, for Mother Bonnet had just come up to announce that she had been back to the cottage to find it untouched, after going away in alarm when the Frenchmen landed, and she said that she had the fire lit and coffee and tea on the way for every one who wanted it.
“Mother Bonnet, you’re a queen!” cried the doctor; and then turning to me: “Rather strange that they should have spared the cottage and old Jonas’s goods, eh, Sep? There’s something behind all this.”
We were not long in finding out what was behind all this. I had my own suspicions without the doctor’s, and they were soon confirmed by the coming of the big three-masted lugger, which was brought close in by the man-o’-war’s men, who landed with a lieutenant at their head, and came up the Gap to see our condition.