At
four o'clock the doctor was working over his exhausted and unconscious
patient at the hospital. Mullins had been stabbed twice, and
dangerously, and half a dozen men with lanterns were hunting about the
bloody sands where the faithful fellow had dropped, looking for a
weapon or a clew, and probably trampling out all possibility of
finding either. Major Plume, through Mr. Doty, his adjutant, had felt
it necessary to remind Captain Wren that an officer in close arrest
had no right to be away from his quarters. Late in the evening, it
seems, Dr. Graham had represented to the post commander that the
captain was in so nervous and overwrought a condition, and so
distressed, that as a physician he recommended his patient be allowed
the limits of the space adjoining his quarters in which to walk off
his superabundant excitement. Graham had long been the friend of
Captain Wren and was his friend as well as physician now, even though
deploring his astounding outbreak, but Graham had other things to
demand his attention as night wore on, and there was no one to speak
for Wren when the young adjutant, a subaltern of infantry, with
unnecessary significance of tone and manner, suggested the captain's
immediate return to his proper quarters. Wren bowed his head and went
in stunned and stubborn silence.
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