"Strictly speaking, he ought not to have placed them in confinement at all at Whittlecup, but sent them at once under escort to headquarters."
"What's this that we are meeting?" said the Adjutant. "I hear men marching."
The Colonel drew up his horses, and the regular footfall of soldiers became audible, and gradually grew louder. "They march uncommonly well, Eureton, for militia-men who have had no training; I cannot understand it."
"There were half-a-dozen old soldiers in Captain Stanburne's company, and I suppose the sergeant has selected them as a guard for the prisoners."
The night was cloudy and dark, and the lamps of the Colonel's vehicle were so very splendid and brilliant that they made the darkness beyond their range blacker and more impenetrable than ever. As the soldiers came nearer, the Colonel stopped his horses and waited. Suddenly out of the darkness came a corporal and four men with two prisoners. The Colonel shouted, "Halt!"
"Have you any news of Captain Stanburne?"
"He's not quite dead, sir, or was not when we left."
The tall wheels rolled along the road, and in a quarter of an hour the leader had to make his way through a little crowd of people in front of the Blue Bell.
The Doctor was the first in the house, and was led at once to young Stanburne's room. The Whittlecup surgeon was there already. No professional men are so ticklish on professional etiquette as surgeons are, but in this instance there could be little difficulty of that kind. "You are the surgeon to the regiment, I believe," said the Whittlecup doctor; "you will find this a very serious case. I simply took charge of it in your absence."
The patient was not dead, but he was perfectly insensible. He breathed faintly, and every few minutes there was a rattling in the throat, resembling that which precedes immediate dissolution. The two doctors examined the wound together. The skull had been fractured by the blow, and there was a gash produced by the nail in the board. The face was extremely pale, and so altered as to be scarcely recognizable. The innkeeper's wife, Mrs. Simpson, was moistening the pale lips with brandy.