“Not I. ’Tain’t no business of mine; only it strikes me that there’s going to be a regular row about this. People as go righting don’t like to be called cowards. It hurts anybody, but when it comes to be said of a soldier it’s like skinning him. There, I must go and wet the captain’s lint.”
Saying which, the orderly rose and went to captain Roby’s side to moisten the hot bandages, so that their rapid evaporation might produce a feeling of coolness to his fevered head.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
A Find.
Dickenson walked frowning away from the hospital hut, thinking of the manner in which Roby had shifted the charge of cowardice from his shoulders to Lennox’s, and a sigh of misery escaped from his breast as he made for the side of the bubbling stream.
“Poor fellow!” he said to himself. “I’m afraid that he’s where being called coward or brave man won’t affect him.”
He reached the beautiful, clear stream, lay down and drank like some wild animal, and then began bathing his temples, the water setting him thinking of Lennox’s adventures by its source, and clearing his head so much that when he rose at last and began to walk back to his quarters he felt wonderfully refreshed.
This state of feeling increased to such a degree that when he once more lay down after taking off his hot jacket, the heat from the roof, the buzzing of the flies, and the noises out in the village square mingled together into a whole that seemed slumber-inviting, and in less than ten minutes he was plunged in a deep, heavy, restful sleep, which seemed to him to have lasted about a quarter of a hour, when he was touched upon the shoulder by a firm hand, and sprang up to gaze at the light of a lantern and at nothing else.