Gavin broke out into a cry, so terrible was the jolting of the wagon upon his wounded leg.
Presently, when he became calmer, he asked:
“Will my leg be crooked or disfigured in any way if I get well?”
“Pooh! I don’t know. It is no matter, so you get well.”
“But my legs are very important to me, at least.”
“You are very vain of them. Well, I dare say they will be all right.”
Hours of agony followed, and Gavin was not of the sort to endure pain silently. He moaned and cried incessantly, and St. Arnaud comforted him as a mother comforts a suffering child.
By daylight he was at Zittau, lying in a rude bed in an artisan’s house. St. Arnaud stayed with him a few hours, and then was obliged to leave him, but not before sending an express to Vienna to Lady Hamilton, to Gavin’s joy and relief. He felt, as he lay in agonizing pain upon his hard bed, that could he but know his mother was near, half his suffering would be over.
Six days of suffering followed, suffering that turned his ruddy cheeks to a deathly pallor, and brought lines never to be effaced in his boyish face. He burned with fever, while racked with anguish, and neither day nor night brought him any relief. The artisan’s family were kind to him, and he had the surgical attention necessary, but Zittau was full of wounded Austrians, and all suffered hardships.
On the sixth evening, just as Gavin felt himself sinking into delirium, the door to his little room opened. He thought it was the woman of the house coming to do what little she could for him; but oh, happiness! it was his mother; and behind her was thirteen-year-old Freda, lugging a great soft pillow; and Gavin, throwing his arms around his mother’s neck as she clasped him, sobbed and cried with joy and pain as he had not done since he was a little lad.