"Who is he, I wonder?" the other chambermaid wanted to know; but no one could tell her.
"He looks like an officer," some one remarked; "I think I've seen him in the town before, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the officers."
"The doctor will know, maybe," suggested the land-lord. "Poor fellow! I'm afraid it's all up with him. I don't think he can speak."
He had never spoken but that once, when the soul of the infidel, in that supreme moment of mortal agony, in spite of the infidel creed of his life, had uttered that awful invocation—"O my God!" But the power of speech was not gone, nor of hearing; he retained all his senses, and, strangely enough, did not seem to suffer much. He lay quiescent, his dark eyes wide open, and staring vacantly straight ahead, his dark hair, dabbled with blood, falling loose on the pillow and around his bloodless face. They had drawn a white spread over him; and he had a strangely corpse-like look, with his white set face, and marble-like rigidity. But life burned yet in the strained, wide-open eyes.
The doctor came—it was Dr. Leach; and he knew him immediately, and told the gaping and curious bystanders who he was. He was very much shocked, and more shocked still when the white spread was drawn away, and the terrible truth revealed. The eyes of the wounded man followed him as he made his examination, but with no eagerness or hopefulness—only with a dull and awful sort of apathy.
"Do you know me, Captain Cavendish?" Dr. Leach asked, tenderly touching the heavy, dark hair falling over his face.
"Yes. How long——?"
He did not finish the sentence, not because he was unable to do it, but that he evidently thought he had finished it, and his eyes never once left the physician's face.
Dr. Leach looked very sadly down in the dark, inquiring eyes.
"My poor fellow!" he said, "it is hard, I know, and for one so young and so far from all your friends. It is hard to die like this; but it is Heaven's will, and we must submit."