At midnight the young cavalry surgeon, who had been freely dosed with brandy, professed himself ready to take over the minor casualties.

The two hospital surgeons, by this time worn out, accepted the offer and withdrew.

No one thought of me.
I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders on the edge of an unoccupied bed (from which a dead man had been carried out a little before midnight) I must have dropped across it in a sleep of utter exhaustion.

It appears too that the young doctor, finding me there a short while after, carried me out and laid me on the ground with my head against the hut.

He never admitted this: for I had been attending upon him, off and on, since his arrival, and that he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accounted for.