He gave him an easy slap on the shoulder, as if he considered him a well man already. He knew just where to administer these slaps, and just how to graduate them to the invalid's weakness. After counting the man's pulse he smiled in his face with an air of astonishment and admiration, and proceeded, "Beautiful! Couldn't do it better if you had never got hit. Nurse, bring this man a milk-punch. That's all the medicine _he_ wants." When they had got a few yards from the bed he sighed, jerked his thumb backward significantly, and whispered to Colburne, "No use. Can't save him. No vitality. Bone-yard to-morrow." They stopped to examine another man who had been shot through the head from temple to temple, but without unseating life from its throne. His head, especially about the face, was swollen to an amazing magnitude; his eyes were as red as blood, and projected from their sockets, two awful lumps of inflammation. He was blind and deaf, but able to drink milk-punches, and still full of vital force. "Fetch him round, I _guess_," whispered the Doctor with a smile of gratification. "Holds out beautiful." "But he will always be blind, and probably idiotic." "No. Not idiotic. Brain as sound as a nut. As for blindness, can't say. Shouldn't wonder if he could use his peepers yet. Great doctor, old Nature--if you won't get in her way. Works miracles--miracles! Why, in the Peninsular campaign I sent off one man well, with a rifle-ball in his heart. _Must_ have been in his heart. There's your room-mate, the Major. Put a walking cane through him, and _he_ won't die. Could, but won't. Too good pluck to let go. Reg'lar bull terrier." "How is my boy Jerry? The little Irish fellow with a shot in the groin." "Ah, I remember. Empty bed to-morrow." "You don't mean that there's no hope for him?" "No, no. All right. I mean he'll get his legs and be about. No fear for that sort. Pluck enough to pull half a dozen men through. Those devil-may-care boys make capital soldiers, they get well so quick. This fellow will be stealing chickens in three weeks. I wouldn't bet that I _could_ kill him."