"I'm shrewdly slashed in the leg, Captain," expostulated Dotey; "and fear me I cannot walk."
"Ay? Sit down, then, and let me see. Thou 'st a sore wound in thy leather breeches, but--ay, there's a scratch beneath, but naught to hinder your moving. Here, I'll plaster it up in a twinkling."
And from the pocket of his doublet the old soldier produced a case containing some of the most essential requisites of surgery, and with a deftness and delicacy of touch, surprising to one who had not seen him beside a sick-bed, he soon had the wound safe and comfortable.
"There, man, thou 'rt fit to walk from here to Cape Cod. Many a mile have I marched with a worse wound than that, and no better than a rag or at best my belt bound round it. Now you sirrah! Hast a scratch, too?"
For reply Lister silently held out a hand whence the blood dripped freely from a cut across the palm.
"Tried to grasp 't other fool's dagger in thy naked hand, eh?" coolly remarked the Captain as he cut a strip of plaster to fit the wound. "Now the next time take my counsel and catch it in the leathern sleeve of thy jerkin. Better wound a dead calf than a live one."
"Next time, sayst he!" commented Dotey in a mock aside to his companion. "So we were not so far astray this time."
"Next time thou meetest a dagger, I should have said," retorted the Captain with his grimmest smile. "I never said ye were not to fight, for I trow ye'll have chance enough at that before I'm done with ye; but when a handful of men are set as we are to garrison a little post on the frontier of a savage country, for one to fall afoul of another and to risk two lives out of a dozen for some senseless feud of their own is to my mind little short of treason to the government they've sworn to defend. Now then, march! Alden, give Dotey thy arm to lean upon if he needs it. Forward!"
That night Dotey and Lister slept in two rooms under guard, and the next morning the freemen of the colony were convened in the Common house to judge their case. With them Billington was also summoned, although neither Dotey nor Lister had betrayed his complicity.
Accused of deliberate assault upon each other with deadly weapons both men humbly pleaded guilty and expressed their penitence, but to this Bradford gravely replied,--
