"Not to speak with him. I am afraid he is sick. He was leaning on the porter's arm. He is in number eighteen. Do go and ask how he is."
"I will. You are certain that it is our Captain Colburne?"
"It must be," answered Lillie as he went out; and then thought with a blush, "Will papa laugh at me if I am mistaken?"
When Ravenel rapped at the door of No. 18, a deep but rather hoarse voice answered, "Come in."
"My dear friend!" exclaimed the Doctor, rushing into the room; but the moment that he saw the Captain he stopped in surprise and dismay.
"Don't get up," he said. "Don't stir. Bless me! how long have you been in this way?"
"Only a little while—a month or two," answered Colburne with his customary cheerful smile. "Soon be all right again. Sit down."
He was stretched at full length on his bed, evidently quite feeble, his eyes underscored with lines of blueish yellow, his face sallow and features sharpened. The eyes themselves were heavy and dull with the effects of the opium which he had taken to enable him to undergo the day's journey. Besides his long brown mustache, which had become ragged with want of care, he had on a beard of three weeks' growth; and his face and hands were stained with the dust and smirch of two days' continuous railroad travel, which he had not yet had time to wash away—in fact, as soon as he had reached his room he had thrown himself on the bed and fallen asleep. His only clothing was a summer blouse of dark blue flannel, a common soldier's shirt of knit woolen, Government trousers of coarse light-blue cloth without a welt, and brown Government stockings worn through at toe and heel. On the floor lay his shoes, rough kip-skin brogans, likewise of Government issue. All of his clothing was ineradically stained with the famous mud of Virginia; his blouse was threadbare where the sword-belt went, and had a ragged bullet-hole through the collar. Altogether he presented the spectacle of a man pretty thoroughly worn out in field service.
"Is that all you wear in this season?" demanded, or rather exclaimed the Doctor. "You will kill yourself."
Colburne's answering laugh was so feeble that its cheerfulness sounded like mockery.