was here he brought the man with the eye-glass one early dawn, after two
nights and two days on the river, pulling him up the long hill in a low
cart with his strong faithful dogs, hitching himself with them and
toiling upwards through the dark. In his three-roomed hut he laid his
charge down upon a pile of bear-skins, and tended him with a strange
gentleness, bathing the wound in the head and binding it again and again.

The next morning the sick man opened his eyes heavily. He then began
fumbling mechanically on his breast. At last his fingers found his
monocle. He feebly put it to his eye, and looked at Jo in a strange,
questioning, uncomprehending way.

"I beg--your pardon," he said haltingly, "have I ever--been intro--"
Suddenly his eyes closed, a frown gathered on his forehead. After a
minute his eyes opened again, and he gazed with painful, pathetic
seriousness at Jo. This grew to a kind of childish terror; then slowly,
as a shadow passes, the perplexity, anxiety and terror cleared away, and
left his forehead calm, his eyes unvexed and peaceful. The monocle
dropped, and he did not heed it. At length he said wearily, and with an
incredibly simple dependence:

"I am thirsty now."

Jo lifted a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drank, drank, drank to
repletion. When he had finished he patted Jo's shoulder.

"I am always thirsty," he said. "I shall be hungry too. I always am."

Jo brought him some milk and bread in a bowl. When the sick man had
eaten and drunk the bowlful to the last drop and crumb, he lay back with