“You are hit in the body, sure enough,” the man said, “for there is a bullet hole through your cuirass, and your jerkin below it is all stained with blood.  You have been hit in the left arm too, and the blood is frozen to the ground; but we will soon free that for you.  But before trying to do that we will cut open the sleeve of your jerkin and bandage your arm, or the movement may set it off bleeding again, and you have lost a pool of blood already.”

Very carefully the soldiers did their work, and then placing Malcolm on the stretcher carried him away to the camp.  Here the surgeons were all hard at work attending to the wounded who were brought in.  They had already been busy all night, as those whose hurts had not actually disabled them found their way into the camp.  As he was a Scotch officer he was carried to the lines occupied by Colonel Henderson with his Scotch brigade.  He was known to many of the officers personally, and no time was lost in attending to him.  He was nearly unconscious again by the time that he reached the camp, for the movement had caused the wound in his body to break out afresh.

His armour was at once unbuckled, and his clothes having been cut the surgeons proceeded to examine his wounds.  They shook their heads as they did so.  Passing a probe into the wound they found that the ball, breaking one of the ribs in its course, had gone straight on.  They turned him gently over.

“Here it is,” the surgeon said, producing a flattened bullet.  The missile indeed had passed right through the body and had flattened against the back piece, which its force was too far spent to penetrate.

“Is the case hopeless, doctor?” one of the officers who was looking on asked.

“It is well nigh hopeless,” the doctor said, “but it is just possible that it has not touched any vital part.  The lad is young, and I judge that he has not ruined his constitution, as most of you have done, by hard drinking, so that there is just a chance for him.  There is nothing for me to do but to put a piece of lint over the two holes, bandage it firmly, and leave it to nature.  Now let me look at his arm.

“Ah!” he went on as he examined the wound, “he has had a narrow escape here.  The ball has cut a vein and missed the principal artery by an eighth of an inch.  If that had been cut he would have bled to death in five minutes.  Evidently the lad has luck on his side, and I begin to think we may save him if we can only keep him quiet.”

At the earnest request of the surgeons tents were brought up and a hospital established on some rising ground near the field of battle for the serious cases among the wounded, and when the army marched away to join the Saxons at Leipzig a brigade was left encamped around the hospital.

Here for three weeks Malcolm lay between life and death.  The quantity of blood he had lost was greatly in his favour, as it diminished the risk of inflammation, while his vigorous constitution and the life of fatigue and activity which he had led greatly strengthened his power.  By a miracle the bullet in its passage had passed through without injuring any of the vital parts; and though his convalescence was slow it was steady, and even at the end of the first week the surgeons were able to pronounce a confident opinion that he would get over it.