“Yes—please if it’s necessary,” said Lennox, catching at the orderly as if attacked by vertigo.—“Thank you, old fellow,” he whispered huskily as Dickenson started forward and caught him by the other arm. “Not much the matter. Gone through a good deal. Faint. The sun. Touch of stroke, I think.”
He hung heavily upon the pair, who assisted him out into the next hut, while Roby’s accusation was reiterated, the words ringing in his ears: “Coward!—cur!—runaway!” till he was out of sight, when Roby sank back exhausted.
“Don’t question him, and don’t let him talk about what he has gone through,” said the doctor a short time later, when he had made his fresh patient as comfortable as circumstances would allow, and he was growing drowsy from the sedative administered. “It’s not sunstroke, but a mingling of the results of exposure and overdoing it altogether. I don’t quite understand it yet, and I want to get at the truth without asking him.”
“Oh doctor! don’t you join in thinking the poor fellow has been behaving in a cowardly way.”
“Tchah! Rubbish! What is it to me, sir, how the man has been behaving? He’s all wrong, isn’t he?”
“Yes; terribly.”
“Very well, then, I’ve got to put him all right. If he has committed any breach of discipline you can court-martial him when I’ve done.”
“But, hang it all, doctor!” cried Dickenson fiercely, “you don’t believe he’s a coward?”
“Humph! Very evident you don’t, my lad,” said the doctor grimly.
“Of course not.”