Dr. Rush dressed my arm, and I went back to duty with the member in a sling, and aching like mad. His Excellency, seeing my condition, asked me if my right arm was in good order, but made no reference to the left. After I took his commands for the morning he said, seeing me limp, “Were you much hurt?” I said, “No; I ran against something sharp in the bastion.” He smiled, and that was the end of the matter. Fair women and brave men were to his Excellency’s liking. This was my last of active warfare. The marquis tried his hand at a sally, and made ready too late to get away over the York River; but the sally came to nothing, and the belated effort to run to still less. I neglected to say that the French, having come to the abatis, waited in line while the pioneers used their axes to clear it away. Meanwhile, thanks to too good discipline, they suffered severely. As we rushed the whole thing, we lost far less. “It was very fine and _en regle_,” said Hamilton, “but I like our way better.” And so, I think, do I. The good doctor liked to come to my staff tent in those days, to talk to me or to others. He seemed to think it necessary to inform me of my cousin’s state, and I dare say thought me cool about him. “And if, doctor, I had stuck him through the left side?” said Jack, lying at ease on a bearskin in my tent. “In that case,” said our doctor, in a quite professional way, “the heart or the great arteries had like enough been pierced.” “And what then!” asked Jack of the doctor, who was sitting on the camp-bed. “Probably death would have occurred.” On this Jack looked up with those innocent eyes, and, pushing back the blond locks, said: “It is a great thing to know anatomy. If only I had made a little study of that science, Dr. Rush, I might have had better success at this pig-sticking business we call war.” The sly humour of the fellow set Hamilton to laughing, but the doctor did not smile. “It might have been better for Hugh’s cousin,” he said. “Yes,” said Jack, sweetly; “perhaps.” As they talked I was automatically putting into fine French a letter of his Excellency to Comte d’Estaing, and I took in readily what was passing. When Jack said, “Perhaps,” I cried out, “It would be a fine thing, doctor, to have all this saving knowledge on both sides, so as to know where not to hurt one another.” Hamilton was on the side of Dr. Rush. “It were more to the purpose,” he said, “to sit down and not to go to war at all.” This was set forth demurely, the colonel seeing how serious a dose our fun was for the great physician, who did somewhat lack the capacity to discover the entertainment to be found in this manner of jesting. He returned gravely that this was his opinion, and that had he his way, war and drinking of spirits should alike cease.