"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 blue-gray 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.