And so saying, he passed on to the next prostrate figure.
Towards evening the two men tenderly lifted their officer in their arms and carried him inside the fort, where a rude hospital had been fitted up. Here Charlie, who, after the extraction of the bullet and staunching of blood, had shown symptoms of recovery, opened his eyes, and found himself able to say a few words to those round him. And when they told him how I had probably saved his life his face lit up with a most triumphant smile, and he asked that I might be put into his hand.
As he lay there, scarcely strong enough to speak, and fondling me in his fingers, the doctor entered the hospital.
He came straight to Charlie’s bed. My master’s eyes were closed when Tom first reached his side; and I could see by the face of the latter that he was still as far from recognising his old schoolfellow as ever. But directly Tom softly lifted the clothes in order to examine his wound, the patient woke and opened his eyes. They rested for a moment on the doctor’s face, and then, with a sudden flush and start, he half raised himself in his bed, and exclaimed,—
“Tom Drift, is it you?”
The doctor thus unexpectedly hearing his own name pronounced, turned pale, and started back as if he had been shot. The scared, terrified look returned to his face, and for an instant he seemed as if he would rush from the place. But only for an instant.
As he looked again on the face of his patient a strange expression came over his own. Wonder, doubt, joy, succeeded each other in rapid succession, and then all of a sudden it flashed upon him who this was.
“Charlie!” he exclaimed, trembling with astonishment; and next moment the poor prodigal was on his knees beside his friend’s bed, sobbing, with his head buried in his hands.
Don’t laugh at him, reader, for thus forgetting himself. Tom Drift had been through many trials you know nothing about, and out of those trials he had come broken in spirit and as humble as a child. You might have had more regard for appearances, perhaps, and controlled your emotion genteelly; but, as I have said before, Tom Drift was not anything like so strong-minded as you. So he knelt there and sobbed; and Charlie, as he lay, took his hand into his own, and held it.
Presently he said, softly, “Tom!”