“Which way has he fled?” cried the trooper.
“John,” said the surgeon, “am I not a noncombatant?”
“Whither has the rascal fled?” cried Lawton, impatiently.
“Where you cannot follow—into that wood. But I repeat, John, am I not a noncombatant?”
The disappointed trooper, perceiving that his enemy had escaped him, now turned his eyes, which were flashing with anger, upon his comrade, and gradually his muscles lost their rigid compression, his brow relaxed, and his look changed from its fierce expression, to the covert laughter which so often distinguished his countenance. The surgeon sat in dignified composure on his horse; his thin body erect, and his head elevated with the indignation of one conscious of having been unjustly treated.
“Why did you suffer the villain to escape?” demanded the captain. “Once within reach of my saber, and I would have given you a subject for the dissecting table.”
“’Twas impossible to prevent it,” said the surgeon, pointing to the bars, before which he had stopped his horse. “The rogue threw himself on the other side of this fence, and left me where you see; nor would the man in the least attend to my remonstrances, or to an intimation that you wished to hold discourse with him.”
“He was truly a discourteous rascal; but why did you not leap the fence, and compel him to a halt? You see but three of the bars are up, and Betty Flanagan could clear them on her cow.”
The surgeon, for the first time, withdrew his eyes from the place where the fugitive had disappeared, and turned his look on his comrade. His head, however, was not permitted to lower itself in the least, as he replied,—
“I humbly conceive, Captain Lawton, that neither Mrs. Elizabeth Flanagan, nor her cow, is an example to be emulated by Doctor Archibald Sitgreaves. It would be but a sorry compliment to science, to say that a doctor of medicine had fractured both his legs by injudiciously striking them against a pair of barposts.” While speaking, the surgeon raised the limbs in question to a nearly horizontal position, an attitude which really appeared to bid defiance to anything like a passage for himself through the defile; but the trooper, disregarding this ocular proof of the impossibility of the movement, cried hastily,—