But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter he had the most persistent correspondent of any man in camp and was even then about to write that the sickness had abated, and in another week at the outside would be gone. He did not intend to say that the chill of a sick man’s hand seemed to have struck into the heart whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such length. He did intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the forthcoming Sing-song whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess. ‘You are overdoing it, Bobby,’ said his skipper. ‘Might give the rest of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled into one. Take it easy.’ ‘I will,’ said Bobby. ‘I’m feeling done up, somehow.’ Revere looked at him anxiously and said nothing. There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers and the rush of a galloping horse. ‘Wot’s up?’ asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the answer ‘Wick, ‘e’s down.’ They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. ‘Any one but Bobby and I shouldn’t have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right.’ ‘Not going out this journey,’ gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from the doolie. ‘Not going out this journey.’ Then with an air of supreme conviction ‘I can’t, you see.’ ‘Not if I can do anything!’ said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened over from the mess where he had been dining. He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a bluegray dressing-gown who stared in horror at the bed and cried ‘Oh, my Gawd! It can’t be ‘im!’ until an indignant Hospital Orderly whisked him away. If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days, and the Surgeon-Major’s brow uncreased. ‘We’ll save him yet,’ he said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain, had a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud. ‘Not going out this journey,’ whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at the end of the third day. ‘Bravo!’ said the Surgeon-Major. ‘That’s the way to look at it, Bobby.’ As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby’s mouth, and he turned his face to the tent wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned. ‘I’m awfully tired,’ said Bobby, very faintly. ‘What’s the use of bothering me with medicine? I don’t want it. Let me alone.’ The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift away on the easy tide of Death. ‘It’s no good,’ said the Surgeon-Major. ‘He doesn’t want to live. He’s meeting it, poor child.’ And he blew his nose.