“Joscelyn.”
The name unlocked the floodgates of the young Continental’s sympathies.
“Dunn,” he said to the man in front of him, “give me a hand, that I may get this poor fellow to my tent.”
“The surgeon will find him here directly and have him moved to the field hospital.”
“He could not stand so long a trip; see how near he is already gone with this bullet hole in his side. Come, I have a fancy not to see him die here in the wet grass.”
So Dunn lent his aid, and the wounded man was put down in Richard’s tent, murmuring again that talismanic name.
“He may possibly live till morning,” the surgeon said, when at last he came from attending to his own men, “but he cannot be moved. I will try and send some one to look after him.”
Richard touched his cap, “If you please, I am off duty to-night; I will willingly nurse him, if so you give me directions.”
And the man was left in his care; and during the slow hours, word by word and sentence by sentence, he patched together the fevered ramblings of his patient, until he knew that the Joscelyn of his own hopes and fears and dreams was identical with the girl of this other man’s thoughts.
With the knowledge something seemed to catch at his throat, to tighten about his heart; and he went out and stood awhile at the tent door, gazing up into the clear heavens whose steadfast stars were shining also on the distant Carolina hills, watching a window behind which a girl lay sleeping—dreaming perhaps of the man yonder on the pallet. Had he lost her through this other one? Was his life to miss its one strong purpose, in missing her?