So the long night retreat began, and as we gained the rim of the plains, we saw the first vedettes of the astounded rebels commence their swoop for plunder on what was left of Carlton. Thus ended the busiest hour in my life, for trouble rains on those already wet.
IV
At dusk on the eve of Palm Sunday our sleighs drew into Prince Albert. For three days and three nights our people had not slept, but there was still no rest because a first-class panic broke out among the settlers at the fort of refuge. The doctor had to find some sort of shelter for the wounded men, and the only place free from slush within the Prince Albert stockade consisted of a stack of up-edged planks. He laid us there, and dressed our wounds while the panic raged all round us with deafening clamor of screaming men, sobbing women, children in hysterics, a hammering which they mistook for musketry, and the alarms of the church bell overhead.
My turn came last, for Sarde had given me only a trifling flesh wound through the upper arm. "Is it hurting?" asked Doctor Miller.
It was.
"That's healthy granulation," said he. "Does you good. Serves you right. I'm going to sit with you and have a pipe, or else I'll be asleep in another minute. Got a match?"
His face was long, lean, whimsical, his speech a gentle drawl aching with humor. All of us loved him and the memory of that unhappy gentleman shines down the years just like a ray of light.
"And now, my boy," said he, stuffing his clinical thermometer under my tongue, "I'm going to feel your conscience, if you've got one."
He had me gagged with that infernal instrument.
"Inspector Sarde," said he, "rode with me a-ways on the trail confessing all your sins. You don't seem to get on with my brother officer to any great extent. Wall, sonny, you've both got a temperature and you've both got clinical thermometers in your mouths to allay the heat. Nothing like a thermometer for a hot patient. The day a soldier marries, seems to me, he hangs up all his weapons, and swaps a little drill for bloody war. You're in jolly good luck it wasn't you she married. You ought to be sorry for Mr. Sarde, not hit him because he's down."