All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as
if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did
it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us.

It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared
that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at
the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my
ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm.
They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which
was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into
an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed
fist or a pistol-butt.

"Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some
of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and
McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he
and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels.
You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with
the rest, next morning."

"Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?"

"Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a
colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are
to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to
travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if
you please."

"I have been dangerously ill, have I not?"