He sat down on a mound of earth thrown up by British spades, and I came quite close to him. Nobody paid any attention to us.
“How goes it with Captain Chudleigh?” I asked.
“Poor Chudleigh!” said Albert. “He’s lying in the cellar over there, with a ball through his shoulder sent by one of your infernal sharpshooters.”
“Is it bad?” I asked.
“Yes, very,” he replied. “He may live, or he may die. Kate’s nursing him.”
Well, at any rate, I thought, Chudleigh is fortunate in his nurse; there would have been no such luck for me. But I kept the thought to myself.
“Albert,” I asked, “what did your officers say to you when I brought you back?”
“Dick,” he replied, “let’s take an oath of secrecy on that point even from each other.”
For his part he kept the oath.
I could not withhold one more gibe.