And as he spoke he reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen had not Billy run forward and caught him. He staggered into the house where he had lodgings, and got into his bed, and by midnight he was raving with fever.
Billy had sense enough to go for Dr. Craik, George's old acquaintance, who had volunteered as surgeon to General Braddock's staff. He was a bright-eyed, determined-looking man, still young, but skilled in his profession. By morning the fever was reduced, and Dr. Craik was giving orders about the treatment as he sat by George's bedside, for the army was to resume its march that day.
"Your attack is sharp," said the doctor, "but you have an iron constitution, and with ordinary care you will soon be well."
George, pale and haggard, but without fever, listened to the doctor's directions with a half smile. The troops were already on the move; outside could be heard the steady tramp of feet, the thunder of horses' hoofs, the roll of artillery-wagons, and the commotion of an army on the move. In a few moments the doctor left him, saying,
"I think you will shortly be able to rejoin the army, Colonel Washington."
As soon as the doctor was out of the room George turned to Billy, and said,
"Help me on with my clothes, and as soon as the troops are well out of the town fetch the horses."
When the soldiers halted at noon, General Braddock, sitting under a tree by the road-side, was asking Dr. Craik's opinion of the time that Colonel Washington could rejoin, when around the corner of a huge bowlder rode George with Billy behind him. He was very pale, but he could sit his horse. He could not but laugh at the doctor's angry face, but said, deprecatingly, to him,
"I would have fretted myself more ill had I remained at Winchester, for I am not by nature patient, and I have been ill so little that I do not know how to be ill."
"I see you don't," was the doctor's dry reply.
For four days George kept up with the army, and managed, in spite of burning fevers, of a horrible weakness and weariness, of sleepless nights racked with pain, to ride his horse. On the fifth he was compelled to take to a covered wagon. There, on a rough bed, with Billy holding his burning head, he was jolted along for ten days more, each day more agonizing than the one before. In that terrible time master and man seemed to have changed places. It was George who was fretful and unreasonable and wildly irritable, while Billy, the useless, the lazy, the incorrigible, nursed him with a patience, a tenderness, a strange intelligence that amazed all who saw it, and was even dimly felt by George. The black boy seemed able to do altogether without sleep. At every hour of the day and night he was awake and alert, ready to do anything for the poor sufferer. As the days passed on, and George grew steadily worse, the doctor began to look troubled. In his master's presence Billy showed no sign of fear, but he would every day follow Dr. Craik when he left, and ask him, with an ashy face, "Marse doctor, is Marse George gwi' die?"