And now once more the strange youth sat contemplating the boy, who seemed to be a tramper like himself, but who, in every other respect, was so vastly different.

He noted the fine, delicately chiseled features, the smallness of his feet, the whiteness and smoothness of his hands.  He had seen boys like this before, but he had never before touched one, never had one of them dependent on him, as it were, as this fellow appeared to be now.

Miles Harding did not know just what to do with the responsibility.  And yet he was happy at having it; he felt glad that he had been able to do that little thing of carrying the boy from the sun into the shade.

It was not often that he was able to do anything for anybody.  He was always in need of having something done for himself.

He tried to think of something else he might do.  He noticed that Rex’s head did not seem to rest very comfortably.

He took off his coat and started to make a roll of it for a pillow.  But he stopped when he had it half finished.

“Maybe he wouldn’t like that,” he muttered, looking down at the garment as he unrolled it again.

It had been made for a man.  There were rents in two places and plentiful sprinklings of grease spots.

The day was growing steadily warmer.  Even under the tree one felt the heat.

“He wouldn’t catch cold without his own,” Miles murmured, and he bent over Rex and lifted him gently while he tried to take off his coat.

Rex opened his eyes and looked at him again as if in protest.

“I was going to make a pillow for you out of your coat,” Miles explained.  “You don’t feel able to walk till we get to a house, do you?”

Rex slowly shook his head.  He was in that condition which sometimes comes to those in seasickness, when he didn’t care whether he lived or died.

“Have you got pain?” went on Miles.

“Only when I walk,” answered Rex; then, as if talking, too, hurt him, he closed his eyes and sank back upon the pillow the other made for him out of his coat.

Meantime clouds had been gathering in the west.  Miles had been too much occupied with his unexpected charge to notice them.  But now he looked up and saw the threatening aspect of the heavens with troubled countenance.

He rose to his feet and strode out into the middle of the road, looking first in one direction, then the other.

His eye brightened as he saw a buggy coming from the westward.

He watched impatiently, till it came up, and then saw that it contained two men.  He held up his hand as a signal for them to stop.  But the driver, who had been talking earnestly with his companion, cut the horse with his whip, shook his head and drove on.

Miles remained there, standing in the road, a hopeless droop coming over his whole figure.

“They think I want to beg of them, I suppose,” he told himself.  “What shall I do?”