The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.
"Richard Venner!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"
Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.
"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.—Oh, yes!—wait a minute and it will all come back to me."
"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two,—will come right by to-morrow."
"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."
Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results,—none slain, one captured.
The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.
"What's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know,—fell on it when his horse came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his clothes.