dungeon, and informed the wounded prisoners that a cart was ready to remove them to an hospital at Dieppe. This journey, of about four leagues, would, in all probability, have terminated the sufferings of Messrs. Dalyell and Donaldson, but Providence raised them up preservers in the midst of their country’s foes. As two French sailors were lifting the former gentleman into the vehicle provided for his conveyance, the inhabitants of St. Valery, then returning fVom mass, stopped to behold this melancholy proof of the dire effects of war. His face was varnished, as it were, with congealed blood; and the occasional movement of the muscles, cracking that external crust, the appearance of his skin below gave those fissures the resemblance of ghastly wounds. The spectators were clamorous that he and his friend, Donaldson, should not be sent to the hospital. The foremost of those good Samaritans were Messrs. Angot (surgeon) and Leseigneur (merchant), both respectable inhabitants of St, Valery. They obtained permission of the commandant for the two officers to remain provisionally at an inn; and they became responsible to the landlord for the payment of his charges, to the amount of 30l., – observing, “If those gentlemen have the means, they will repay us – if not, it is only sacrificing a few hundred francs to charitable duties!” Those benevolent Frenchmen would willingly have received the gallant sufferers into their own houses; but the dread of being considered as friendly to the British nation compelled them to refrain.
Nearly a month elapsed before Lieutenant Dalyell was considered out of danger, and July arrived before he could leave his bed. During this long period, Mons. Angot was his constant, and only professional attendant; – to him alone was he indebted for one of the finest cures ever performed by the art of surgery. Whilst deriving benefit from the care and skill of that benevolent man, he was no less kindly cherished by his other protector, and the females of both their families, who invariably treated him with as much tenderness as even his own mother and sisters could have done. When he was so far recovered as to be able to travel, Messrs.
