When the soldiers halted at noon, General Braddock, sitting under a tree by the road-side, was asking Dr. Craik's opinion of the time that Colonel Washington could rejoin, when around the corner of a huge bowlder rode George with Billy behind him. He was very pale, but he could sit his horse. He could not but laugh at the doctor's angry face, but said, deprecatingly, to him, "I would have fretted myself more ill had I remained at Winchester, for I am not by nature patient, and I have been ill so little that I do not know how to be ill." "I see you don't," was the doctor's dry reply. For four days George kept up with the army, and managed, in spite of burning fevers, of a horrible weakness and weariness, of sleepless nights racked with pain, to ride his horse. On the fifth he was compelled to take to a covered wagon. There, on a rough bed, with Billy holding his burning head, he was jolted along for ten days more, each day more agonizing than the one before. In that terrible time master and man seemed to have changed places. It was George who was fretful and unreasonable and wildly irritable, while Billy, the useless, the lazy, the incorrigible, nursed him with a patience, a tenderness, a strange intelligence that amazed all who saw it, and was even dimly felt by George. The black boy seemed able to do altogether without sleep. At every hour of the day and night he was awake and alert, ready to do anything for the poor sufferer. As the days passed on, and George grew steadily worse, the doctor began to look troubled. In his master's presence Billy showed no sign of fear, but he would every day follow Dr. Craik when he left, and ask him, with an ashy face, "Marse doctor, is Marse George gwi' die?" "I hope not. He is young and strong, and God is good." "Ef he die, an' I go home, what I gwin' say when mistis come out and say, 'Billy, wh'yar yo' Marse George?'" And at that Billy would throw himself on the ground in a paroxysm of grief that was piteous to see. The doctor carefully concealed from the soldiers George's real condition. But after four or five days of agony a change set in, and within the week George was able to sit up and even to ride a little. The wagons had kept with the rear division of the army, but George knew that General Braddock, with twelve hundred picked men, had gone ahead and must be near Fore Duquesne. On the fourteenth day, in the evening when the doctor came he found his patient walking about. He was frightfully thin and pale, but youth and strength and good habits were beginning to assert themselves. He was getting well. "Doctor," said he, "this place is about fifteen miles from Fort Duquesne. I know it well, and from this hour I emancipate myself from you. This day I shall report for duty."