“Why, Doctor, he’s a bigger man nor you,” said Henderson in his Ulster dialect.

“No matter.  I’ll carry him or die!  He has fainted.  He is a dead weight now—­but we leave this road together, or we stay here together.”  Muttering the last words, Malcolm set out, and he carried him safely over very rough ground, under a heavy shower of bullets and rockets, for one hundred and fifty yards to where the nine men awaited them.

Malcolm’s strength was now gone; but Henderson had recovered his powers a little, and joining hands with him, they managed to carry Henry on to the spot where the last company of the Fusiliers and a company of Gourkas were forming, a sharp fire being kept up all the time on both sides.

Neither of them expected to reach the company, as they told one another in after days.  Their sole expectation was to drop with their burden on the stony path of Ghoraphir, and leave their bones among the wild hill tribes.

“McGregor, you have carried Archer all the way?—­Incredible!” cried his brother officers.

“Not I alone—­Henderson helped.  Let us improvise some kind of stretcher, and get him on with us, men, for Heaven’s sake.”

A stretcher was obtained, and he was carried on, while the retreat continued, the two companies alternately firing to keep back the enemy, who pursued for three miles.

* * * * *

Henry lay helpless in a bare room in the fort—­a blessed haven of refuge for the sick and wounded.  Dr. McGregor had invalids in every room; his whole time was occupied, and his ingenuity was taxed to make the poor fellows somewhat comfortable.

“Another death, Doctor,” said the officer in command one morning.

“Indeed, yes; it is that brave chap, Henderson, who helped me to bring Archer in.  Bronchitis has carried him off; a man of fine physique; a fine young fellow, and a countryman of my own.  The cold of this mountain district is fearful.  I can’t keep my patients warm enough, all I can do.”

“How is Archer?  Will he pull through?”

“He is low to-day; but the limb is doing all right.  There is more fever than I like to see,” and the surgeon, looking very grave, hurried away.

Not to neglect any duty, and yet to nurse his comrade as he ought to be nursed was the problem our Jonathan had to solve.

Henry’s fever ran high for several days, leaving him utterly weak.  It was midnight.  The patient and his surgeon were alone; the latter beginning to cherish a feeble hope, the former believing that he had done with earthly things.

“You carried me on your back down Ghoraphir, old fellow,” he said faintly, stretching out a hand and arm that were dried up to skin and bone.

“What of that, Henry?  Keep quiet, I’d advise you.”

“You took off your tunic and laid it over me on the stretcher.  Henderson told me that; and you might have caught your death of cold—­”