"Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after
the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody
must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these,
and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever.
But I never feared for you."

Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided
to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that
confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a
week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_.
But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that
encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection.
Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once
it came to me.

"Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who
broke my head with his pistol-butt?"

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for
my confidence.

"Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that
gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into
fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your
whole carcass!"