The surgeon then went out softly from the room, leaving the girl to
attend to his directions, which she proceeded to do at once; shuddering
the while at what she knew her poor patient would have to undergo, when
the disciple of Aesculapius came back anon, with his myrmidons and their
murderous-looking surgical knives and forceps, to hack and hew away at
Fritz in their search for the bullet buried in his chest--he utterly
oblivious either of his surroundings or what was in store for him,
tossing in the bed under her eyes and rambling in his mind. He fancied
himself still on the battlefield in the thick of the fight:-- "Vorwarts,
my children!" he muttered. "One more charge and the battery is won.
Pouf! that shell had a narrow squeak of spoiling my new helmet. The
gunner will have to take better aim next time!" Then he would shudder
all over, and cry out in piteous tones, "Take it away, take it away--the
blood is all over my face; and his body, oh, it is pressing me down into
that yawning open grave! Will no one save me? It is terrible, terrible
to be buried alive, and the pale stars twinkling down on my agony!"
Presently, however, the cold applications to his head had their effect,
and he sank down into a torpid sleep, only to start up again in the
ravings of delirium a few moments afterwards.

Fritz continued in this state for hours, with intervals of quiet, during
which his nurse, by the doctor's orders, administered beef tea and other
nourishment which sustained the struggle going on in his sinking frame;
until, at last, the ball was extracted, after an operation which was so
prolonged that the girl, who felt almost as if she were undergoing it
herself, thought it would never end.

Then came the worst stage for the sufferer. Fever supervened; and,
although the wound began to heal up, his physical condition grew weaker
every day under the tearing strain his constitution was subjected to.

Even the doctor gave him up; but the girl, who had attended to him with
the most unwearying assiduity had hopes to the last.

Fritz had been unconscious from the time that he first recognised the
dog, on the evening after he was wounded and found himself in the villa,
until the fever left him, when he was so weak that he was unable to lift
a finger and seemed at the very gates of death.

Now, however, his senses returned to him, and a glad look came into his
eyes on seeing, like as he did before and now remembered, the face