"I took it nearly all off, doctor. It was very thick when I found him, and this----" Beverly took a large jagged piece of shell from his pocket. "This was down in it. I think it must have struck and stunned him, and while he was helpless those cruel wheels went over him. His body was as if he had fallen on his back, but the legs were twisted as if he had been on his side. The mud was nearly two feet deep. It was an awful place, awful! And to think that they should have driven over Roy! Do you think----?"
"That was the best place he could have been. That mud has acted like----" The doctor was taking professional pride in the case. The wounded man groaned.
"Oh, how it seems to hurt him, doctor! Can't you--can't I---couldn't we give him something to deaden--? He was never so strong as I. He----"
"You'd better go away, captain. You're brave enough for yourself, but you'd better go away. I'll do my level best for him. I don't think this wound is fatal--and the mud poultice was the very best thing that could have happened to him, really. The wheel that threw that did him a greater service than it did injury to his leg. I--you had better go and lie down for a while, captain. I'll do everything possible, and--well, I hope his lung is not very seriously implicated. I hope we can pull him through. I feel sure of the leg and--go and lie down. You can't do any good here, and you mustn't lose your nerve that way. If he--if I--if he regains consciousness I'll call you, Try to get a little rest for to-morrow. Try. You may be needed then. You must have your nerve then, too, if he should open his eyes and----"
"_If_ he should open his eyes!" Beverly turned away and sat with his face in his hands. "How can I write it to mother," he moaned--"how can I? How can I? And father may not be there to help her bear it! Oh, Roy, Roy, my brother!"
_"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood."_
When the news of the battle reached Katherine, she was still alone. Griffith had not completed the task set, and was still in the tent of the irascible General, whose chief acquaintance with the English language appeared to lie in his explosive and ever ready profanity. He swore if things went right, and he swore if they went wrong. If he liked a man, he swore at him playfully, and if he disliked him, he swore at him in wrath. His ammunition might give out, but a volley of oaths was never wanting to fire at the enemy. It sometimes seemed to Griffith the irony of fate that he should be placed in the same tent and closely associated with such a man, for, although Griffith said nothing, it grated sadly upon his ears, and he sometimes wondered if the Almighty would prosper an expedition led by this man, for Griffith had kept still, through all the years the primitive idea of a personal God who takes cognizance of the doings of men, and meets and parries them by devices and schemes of His own.