The arrangement was carried out, with Doctor Lee ready and alert to take his position by the sufferer’s bed at midnight, when Bourne announced that the patient had only moved once, to ask for water.
“I think he seems to be better. He is fast asleep now,” said Bourne, after saying “Good-night!” and then he left the doctor to himself.
It was getting on towards morning when, making a faint rustling amongst the Indian corn-husks, the doctor bent over and laid his cool hand upon his patient’s brow.
“Who’s that?” came in a harsh voice.
“The doctor.”
“Water.”
This was supplied, and the sufferer lay very quiet for another hour, and then, just as the first faint streaks of dawn appeared, the man asked who was there in a stronger voice, and upon being told, said—
“Yes, that’s right; come nearer. I want to speak to you.”
The doctor bent over his patient, whose voice as he spoke gradually grew stronger and more emphatic, and he went on speaking eagerly till long after sunrise, when he was silent for a few minutes, but only to begin talking uneasily again.
But there was silence in the long shed that morning when Chris took in a mug of coffee and came softly out again under the impression that his father’s patient was asleep; and when Wilton and Bourne came out they heard this as the report of the stranger’s state.