“Glad to hear it, Punch.”
“Yes, I feel as if I could get out of this now.”
“You had better not try,” said Pen with a forced laugh. “I think—I think—” And then the confusion came again.
“What do you think?” said Punch.
“Think?” cried the other. “I—what do you mean?”
In the darkness of the heavy vehicle, Punch’s face betrayed a feeling of alarm, and he tried to figure it out. Something in Pen’s voice frightened him.
“He is not the same,” he muttered; and his impression was substantiated when a halt was called just about the time of dawn, for Pen dropped like a log by the wagon-side; and when Punch, with great pain to himself, struggled into a sitting position, and then clambered down to his comrade, he found to his horror that his worst fears were realised.
Pen’s forehead was burning, and the poor lad was muttering incoherently, and not in a condition to pay heed to the words of his companion.
“Gray, Gray! Can’t you hear? What’s wrong?”
The village which was the new headquarters was higher up in the mountains; and whether it was the fresher air operating beneficially, or whether the period of natural recovery had arrived, certain it was that Punch found himself able to move about again; and during the days and weeks that followed he it was who took the post of nurse and attended to the wants of Pen—wants, alas! too few, for the sufferer was a victim to something worse than a mere shot-wound susceptible to efficient dressing, for the most dangerous, perhaps, of all fevers had laid him low.