"Sergeant Blunt has arrived," he said. "You can set your mind at ease about him; it is a nasty gash, but of no real importance whatever. I have drawn the edges together and sewn them up; he is quite in good spirits, and laughed and said that a wound in the back could scarcely be called an honourable scar. I can assure you that in ten days or so he will be about again." "Would you mind telling him," Mary asked, "that I would come to see him at once, but my father is holding my hand so tight that I could not draw it away without rousing him?" "I will tell him," the surgeon said. "Oh, here is the orderly with your medicine as well as your father's." The orderly brought in a tray with a bowl of beef tea and a glass of wine. "You will take both these, if you please, Miss Armstrong, and I will have the other bed placed by the side of your father, so that you can lie down with him holding your hand. You are looking terribly pale and tired, and I do not want you on my hands too." The tray was placed upon the table within Mary's reach, and the surgeon stood by and saw that she drank the wine and beef tea. He and the orderly then moved the other couch to the side of Mr. Armstrong's bed, and arranged it so that Mary could lie down with her hand still in her father's. "Now," he said, "I recommend you to go off to sleep soon. I am happy to say that your father is sleeping naturally, and it may be hours before he wakes. When he does so, he will be sure to move and wake you, and the sight of you will, if he is sensible, as I expect he will be, go a long way towards his cure." Captain Twentyman, when he returned in the afternoon from a reconnaissance that he had been making with a portion of the troop, called at once to see Ronald, but was told that he was sound asleep, and so left word that he would come again in the morning.