Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/521

 "He's a Reb, I s'pose? Haven't seen him in our crowd."

"Yes," said Roland, "but one man is pretty much the same to you as another, I reckon, and—you know Rose. You might save him."

Ned shrugged again, tossed some lint and other necessaries into a bag on the table, and they set out together. They found Vickers asleep, with the empty whisky flask lying on the snow beside him.

"He didn't recognise me," whispered Roland, "and I don't want him to."

The surgeon nodded.

There was a ruined shed at a hundred yards distance, to which they carried the wounded man, who woke and groaned as he was raised. Arrived under shelter, Ned silently betook himself to examining Vickers' wounds. Arm and leg were both shattered, and three of his ribs were broken by a horse's hoof. Roland watched his friend's face, but it wore the aspect of even gravity common to the faces of men of his profession engaged at their work, and nothing was to be learned from it. His task finished, he patted his patient's shoulder, collected his tools, and left the shed. Roland followed him to the door.

"What do you think? Can he pull through?"

"He would with proper nursing and good food, not without."

"Can we take him with us?"

"No, the Colonel wouldn't hear of it. We have to join Meade at Petersburgh in two days, and we can't afford to be bothered with lame prisoners. Leave him some biscuit, and a bottle of whisky, and let him take his chance. We've done all we could."

"I can't leave him," said Roland.

"You've got mighty fond of him all of a sudden," said Ned, with something of a sneer.

"I'm as fond of him as I always was," answered Roland. "It's Rose."

"Well," said the other, after a moment's silence, and with the air he might have worn had he found himself forced to apply the knife to the flesh of his own child, "if you want my opinion, you shall have it. You'll do a long sight better business for Rose if you let the fellow die. And, besides, you can't save him. He'd take months to heal up in hospital, with every care and attention."

"Somebody might come along and give me a hand to get him to the nearest town," said Roland vaguely, but tenaciously.

"The nearest town is thirty miles away. How would you get him there? It's impossible. Besides, look at this." He pointed to the sky, an even blank of thick grey cloud. "That'll be falling in another hour. You'd be snowed up. And then—hang it all, man, I must be as mad as you are to discuss the thing at all. You don't suppose