"I'm a child! It is of no use to think of it! Never!"—his hard, black eyes, that in these last few months had grown sad and questioning as a child's, looking to the north hill, as he strode along, as though he were bidding some one good-bye. And when he came to the hillock and knelt down again beside Gurney, there was no malice in them. He was faithful in every touch and draught and probe. With the wish in his heart to thrust the knife into the heart of the unconscious man lying before him, he touched him as though he had been his brother.
Gurney, opening his eyes at last, saw the yellow, haggard face, in its fringe of black beard, as rigid as if cut out of stone, very near his own. The grave, hopeless eyes subdued him.
"Take me out of this," he moaned.
"You are going—to the hospital,"—helping some men lift him into an ambulance.
"Slowly, my good fellows. I will follow you."
He did follow them. Let us give the man credit for every step of that following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney on a heap of straw in the library, a surgeon passed through the room.
"Story," said Paul, catching his arm, "see to that man: this is your post, I believe. I have dressed his wound. I cannot do more."
Story did not know the meaning of that. He stuck his eye-glasses over his hook-nose, and stooped down, being nearsighted.
"Hardly worth while to put him under my care, or anybody's. The fellow will not live until morning."
"I don't know. I did what I could."