and announced the fact by one great disconnected bark and a saltatory motion.  This done he turned to and also ate a voracious supper.  Robinson rolled himself up in George’s great-coat and slept like a top on the floor.  Next morning he was waked by a tapping, and there was Carlo seated bolt upright with his tail beating the floor because George was sitting up in the bed looking about him in a puzzled way.

“Jacky,” said he, “is that you?”

Robinson got up, rubbed his eyes, and came toward the bed.  George stared in his face and rubbed his eyes, too, for he thought he must be under an ocular delusion.  “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Well!  I didn’t think to see you under a roof of mine again.”

“Just the welcome I expected,” thought Robinson bitterly.  He answered coldly:  “Well, as soon as you are well you can turn me out of your house, but I should say you are not strong enough to do it just now.”

“No, I am weak enough, but I am better—­I could eat something.”

“Oh, you could do that! what! even if I cooked it?  Here goes, then.”

Tom lit the fire and warmed some beef soup.  George ate some, but very little; however he drank a great jugful of water—­then dozed and fell into a fine perspiration.  It was a favorable crisis, and from that moment youth and a sound constitution began to pull him through; moreover no assassin had been there with his lancet.

Behold the thief turned nurse!  The next day as he pottered about clearing the room, opening or shutting the windows, cooking and serving, he noticed George’s eye following him everywhere with a placid wonder which at last broke into words: 

“You take a deal of trouble about me.”

“I do,” was the dry answer.

“It is very good of you, but—­”

“You would as lieve it was anybody else; but your other friends have left you to die like a dog,” said Robinson sarcastically.  “Well, they left you when you were sick—­I’ll leave you when you are well.”

“What for?  Seems to me that you have earned a right to stay as long as you are minded.  The man that stands by me in trouble I won’t bid him go when the sun shines again.”

And at this precise point in his sentence, without the least warning, Mr. Fielding ignited himself—­and inquired with fury whether it came within Robinson’s individual experience that George Fielding was of an ungrateful turn, or whether such was the general voice of fame.  “Now, don’t you get in a rage and burst your boiler,” said Robinson.  “Well, George—­without joking, though—­I have been kind to you.  Not for nursing you—­what Christian would not do that for his countryman and his old landlord sick in a desert?—­but what would you think of me if I told you I had come a hundred and sixty miles to bring you a letter?  I wouldn’t show it you before, for they say exciting them is bad for fever, but I think I may venture now; here it is.”  And Robinson tore off one by one the twelve envelopes, to George’s astonishment and curiosity.  “There.”