"Greatly, I believe," replied Edgar; "but you are very much changed too, Mr. Norries, and I regret to see that the alteration has been effected by illness." "Ay!" answered the other, gloomily, "they have brought the strong man to infant weakness, and the daring man to skulk in a hole like this. If others had been as resolute and as vigorous, the case would have been different. But I have not regrets for myself, Mr. Adelon. I regret that another opportunity has been lost for my country: an opportunity which may never return. I regret that my countrymen, in their feebleness and their timidity, have suffered the golden moment to slip from them, after boasting that they were ready to seize it, and to dare all odds to render it available to the common good. They fled, sir, like a flock of sheep, from a handful of men in red coats, and I am almost hopeless of them. I went down, it is true, almost at the first, with a bitter wound in my side, and my horse shot under me; but if they had then rushed on--ay, though they had trampled the soul out of my body--they would have gained the day, and I would have blessed them. Nevertheless, the time may yet come, and I will live for it. Only one success, to give them confidence in themselves, to knit them together, to prove to them that they can fight and conquer if they will, and all is secure. It is the novelty of the thing that scares them: and those Frenchmen, too, who ran at the very first shot, what do they deserve? But I forget; we are rambling from the point." "You seem to have been badly wounded, indeed," replied Edgar, as the sick man sunk back upon his pillow, exhausted with the stern vehemence of his own thoughts; "but tell me, Mr. Norries, have you proper attendance here? Such wounds as yours would need a skilful surgeon."