"Hello!" Philip hailed the mule driver.
"What's wantin'?" asked the man and halted.
Philip indicated Themar with his foot.
"Here is a gentleman," he explained, "whom I discovered lurking about my camp a while ago. He showed me his knife and I've mussed him up a bit."
The mule-driver bent over Themar and sharply scanned the dark, foreign face.
"One o' them damned black-and-tans, eh?" he growled. "They're too ready with their knives. What ye goin' to do with him?"
"I'm wondering," shrugged Philip, smoothing his rumpled hair back from his forehead with the palm of his hand, "if you'll permit me to pay his passage to a hospital, the farther away, the better."
The mule-driver glanced searchingly at Mr. Poynter's face. Apparently satisfied, he cupped his mouth with his hands and called "Ho, Jem!"
"Jem" jerked sharply at the tiller and presently the scow scraped the shore. The mule-driver consigned the care of his mules to Philip and scrambled down the grassy bank to the edge of the water.
"Where ye want him took?" demanded Jem, scratching a bristling shock of hair which glimmered through the dawn like a thicket of spikes.