She glanced irresolutely a moment at the handsome, imploring countenance of the speaker, and then her gaze flickered to his huge companion. The silent, wistful appeal she read in the latter's grim, cadaverous face decided her.
"Eheu!" she said softly, "'e is a ver' seeck man . . . but come then, m'sieurs, if you wish it!"
Cautiously they tip-toed into the room behind her.
Yes! They decided, he was a "seeck" man all right! So sick that he could not raise his flushed, hollow-cheeked young face from the pillow to salute his comrades with his customary impious bonhomie. Now, gabbling away to himself in the throes of delirium, ever his feverish eyes stared beyond the hospital-walls westwards to Davidsburg.
With his brow contracted with an expression of vague worry, he was living over and over again the memorable night in which he had gotten his wound.
"Slavin!—Yorkey!" he kept repeating, in tones of such yearning entreaty that moved those individuals more than they cared to show. Yes, they were both of them there, standing by the side of his cot; but the poor sufferer's unseeing eyes betrayed no recognition.
The deep sorrow that oppressed Slavin and Yorke just then those worthies rarely—if ever—alluded to afterwards. Passing the love of women is the unspoken, indefinable spirit of true comradeship that exists between some men.
For one brief, soul-baring moment the comrades stared at each other, their self-conscious faces reflecting mutually their inmost feelings; then Yorke turned to Sister Marthe.
"What does the Doctor say?" he whispered anxiously.
The nurse was about to make answer when the door was softly opened and that gentleman entered the room, accompanied by Captain Bargrave and Inspector Kilbride.