“Miss Letty!” he echoed with quick interest—“Oh, then it must be Boy. He stayed with her up in Scotland at a house just opposite my father’s——”
The surgeon raised a warning finger,—and he was silent. Boy opened his eyes, dimly blue, and slowly glazing over with a dark film, and looked up in the face of “Nurse Morrison.”
“Have we won?” he asked faintly.
The surgeon laid his firm kind hand upon the fitfully beating pulse.
“Don’t fret! We shall win!” he said.
Boy gazed blankly up from his straight pallet bed.
“Shall we?—I don’t know—it’s all defeat—defeat!—and they’ve got the guns!—by treachery. Where’s Alister?”
“Here!” said the young lieutenant, advancing. “Cheer up, old chap!”
“I knew it must be you!” said Boy, trying to stretch out his hand. “When you shot that Boer coward—and took me up on your horse—I knew!—Alister all over!—You were always like that—about fighting the enemies of England—do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember”—and Alister affectionately touched that feebly groping hand—“Don’t you worry! It’s all right!”