These words George spoke with a very singular tone of gravity.

“Never you. mind you about him.”

“No!  I must try to forgive him; we are all great sinners; is it cold to-day?”

“No! it is a good deal hot

“I thought it must, for the wind is in a kindly quarter.  Well, Jacky, I am as cool as ice.”

“Dat very curious.”

“And my head do ache so I can hardly bear myself.”

“You ill a little—­soon be well.”

“I doubt I shall be worse before I am better.”

“Never you mind you.  I go and bring something I know.  We make it hot with water, den you drink it; and after dat you a good deal better.”

“Do, Jacky.  I won’t take doctor’s stuff; it is dug out of the ground and never was intended for man’s inside.  But you get me something that grows in sight and I’ll take that; and don’t be long, Jacky—­for I am not well.”

Jacky returned toward evening with a bundle of simples.  He found George shivering over a fire.  He got the pot and began to prepare an infusion.  “Now you soon better,” said he.

“I hope so, Jacky,” said George very gravely, “thank you, all the same.  Jacky, I haven’t been not to say dry for the last ten days with me washing the sheep, and I have caught a terrible chill—­a chill like death; and, Jacky, I have tried too much—­I have abused my strength.  I am a very strong man as men go, and so was my father; but he abused his strength—­and he was took just as I am took now, and in a week he was dead.  I have worked hard ever since I came here, but since Abner left me at the pinch it hasn’t been man’s work, Jacky; it has been a wrestling-match from dawn to dark.  No man could go on so and not break down; but I wanted so to save the poor sheep.  Well, the sheep are saved; but—­”

When Jacky’s infusion was ready he made George take it and then lie down.  Unfortunately the attack was too violent to yield to this simple remedy.  Fever was upon George Fielding—­fever in his giant shape; not as he creeps over the weak, but as he rushes on the strong.  George had never a headache in his life before.  Fever found him full of blood and turned it all to fire.  He tossed—­he raged—­and forty-eight hours after his first seizure the strong man lay weak as a child, except during those paroxysms of delirium which robbed him of his reason while they lasted, and of his strength when they retired.

On the fourth day—–­after a raging paroxysm—­he became suddenly calm, and looking up saw Jacky seated at some little distance, his bright eye fixed upon him.

“You better now?” inquired he, with even more than his usual gentleness of tone.  “You not talk stupid things any more?”

“What, Jacky, are you watching me?” said the sick man.  “Now I call that very kind of you.  Jacky, I am not the man I was—­we are cut down in a day like the ripe grass.  How long is it since I was took ill?”