"What preys upon your mind, Mr. Drogue?" he asked pleasantly. "Sir?" "I ask you what it is that troubles you." I felt a slow heat in my cheeks: "I have nothing on my mind, sir, save desire to return to duty." He said in his kindly way: "You would mend more quickly, sir, if your mind were tranquil." I felt my face flush to my hair: "Why do you suppose that my mind is uneasy, Doctor?" "You have asked no questions. A sick man, when recovering, asks many. You seem to remain incurious, indifferent. Yet, you are in the house of old friends." He looked at me out of his kind, grave eyes: "Also," he said, "you had many days of fever." My face burned: I feared to guess what he meant, but now I must ask. "Did I babble?" "A feverish patient often becomes loquacious." "Of--of whom did I--rave?" I could scarce force myself to the question. Then, as he also seemed embarrassed, I added: "You need not name her, Doctor. But I beg you to tell me who besides yourself overheard me." "Only your soldier, Nicholas Stoner, and a Saguenay Indian, who squats outside your door day and night." "Nobody else?" "I think not." "Has Lady Johnson heard me? Or Mistress Swift? Or--Mistress Grant?" I stammered. "Why, no," said he. "These ladies were most tender and attentive when your soldiers brought you hither; but two days afterward, while you still lay unconscious,--and your right lung filling solid,--there came a flag from General Schuyler, and an escort of Albany Horse for the ladies. And they departed as prisoners the following morning, with their flag, to be delivered and set at liberty inside the British lines." "They are gone?" "Yes, sir. Lady Johnson, while happy in her prospective freedom, and hopeful of meeting her husband in New York City, seemed very greatly distressed to leave you here in such a plight. And Mistress Swift offered to remain and care for you, but our military authorities would not allow it." I said nothing. He added, with a faint smile: "Our authorities, I take it, were impatient to be rid of responsibility for these fair prisoners, Mr. Drogue. I know that Schuyler is vastly relieved." "Has Stephen Watts been taken?" I asked abruptly. "Or Hare, or Butler?" "Not that I have heard of." So they had got clean away, that spying crew!--Watts and Hare and Walter Butler! Well, that was better. God knows I had a million times rather meet Steve Watts in battle than take him skulking here inside our lines a-spying on our camp, exchanging information with his unhappy sister and with Claudia, or slinking about the shrubbery by night to press his sweetheart's waist and lips---- I turned my hot face on the pillow and lay a-thinking. The doctor laid back my blanket, looked at my hurts, then covered me. "You do well," he said. "In two weeks you shall be out o' bed. Bones must knit and wounds scar before you carry pack again. And before your lung is strong you shall need six months rest ere you take the field."