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Chapter XXXVII.

On reaching the hut, the only thing to be done was to lay the stranger upon the ground. It was an uncomfortable bed, but Jack looked round in vain for something to make things more luxurious: there was nothing in the hut but the two or three pots used in cooking—not even a blanket.

Jack ran to the place where he had left his own possessions, and quickly brought them to the hut: he unrolled his blanket and spread it over the man. As we have no name for the stranger, I will call him The Hermit.

For this act of kindness Jack received only a grunt, which might have been construed into satisfaction or the reverse; but he took no notice. I think, a few weeks ago, had Jack Stanley been treated with the rudeness which this hermit showed him in return for his kind services, he would have felt much disposed to leave the cross-grained stranger to himself; but now he had no such inclination, he felt more amused at the hermit's discourtesy than anything else.

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Of course Jack Stanley knew nothing of surgery, but, being aware that the hermit's leg was broken, he knew it must be set. How often he wished that Bernard was with him!

He was thinking in his own mind that he was three days' journey from the settlement, and questioning if he could procure any surgical help there, even if he could leave the injured man for so long a time. Bernard might very likely not be returned, and he did not know if the missionary, Mr. Grant, had any surgical skill. Moreover, would not the leg be past setting effectually after such a lapse of time which must pass before his return, even if he made up his mind to leave the hermit?

“What are you thinking of?” asked the latter, as he caught Jack's earnest eyes fixed upon him.

“I was thinking how I am to get some one to set your leg,” Jack answered.

“You had better not try,” said the hermit. “Set my leg yourself, if it must be set; if not, let it alone.”

“I am not a surgeon, and I never saw a leg set in my life,” said Jack, looking positively frightened.

“It is easy enough: make the two broken bits come together, then tie it up in pieces of wood, and bandage it up stiff. Perhaps you had better do it at once, or I shall give you more trouble than you care for.” He stopped for the pain of his broken leg; then continued, after a pause, during which the drops had burst out upon his forehead: “You can find some pieces of wood that page 336 will serve for splints, as they call them, if you look about; and you must get some flax for bandages: make haste.”

Jack Stanley left the hut to do as he was bid. However much he disliked it, he was constituted surgeon to the hermit. But he could only do his best; and, after a little time, choosing some pieces of wood which seemed best fitted for the purpose, and, having torn up his waterproof mackintosh for bandages, instead of attempting to make them, as suggested, of flax, Jack returned to his eccentric patient.

Of course he must have tortured him dreadfully in his amateur attempts at setting the leg, but the hermit bore it like a Stoic. Jack did succeed in placing the two broken edges together, and, putting the pieces of wood at the sides, he bound it round. If the hermit felt relieved when the job was accomplished, I am sure Jack Stanley was equally so, for he had never in his life done anything more against the grain.

“You bear pain well, sir,” said he, as he gently wiped the moisture from the face of the hermit with his own pocket-handkerchief: the stranger did not appear to have one. “I must have hurt you dreadfully.”

“Bodily pain is of little consequence, young man,” answered the hermit, “if that were all.” He stopped, then said stiffly, “I suppose I ought to thank you for your services; but you brought the trouble upon yourself by breaking through my prohibition. I told you to go: you had better have kept away and left me to die,” and he shuddered.

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The thanks, if, indeed, they could be so called, were so ungracious that Jack would have felt amused at any other time.

Shortly afterwards he rose, for night was coming on, and he knew that some preparation must be made for it. He collected a large quantity of wood and lighted a fire, which he hoped he might be able to keep burning during the night, so as not to be left in darkness with the sick man. He then fetched water from the river, and, putting some on to boil, prepared some tea for the hermit, and placed his own supper to cook. But, when he re-entered the hut with the tea, he found the stranger already uneasily sleeping and muttering in his sleep; and he did not choose to wake him from a slumber which, probably, arose from exhaustion.

When he had eaten his supper, he put the fire together, and, returning within the hut, he sat down by the spot where the hermit lay, intending to sit awake through the night. But it is very difficult for young people to keep awake, excepting under strong excitement, and before long Jack was quietly sleeping by the side of his patient.

His sleep was broken by the voice of the hermit, and Jack Stanley, upon opening his eyes, stared blankly into the fitful light which the fire outside caused, without remembering at first where he was. But the words of the sick man recalled him to his position.

“A judgment! a judgment!” he muttered. “I knew the vengeance of God would overtake me at length. It page 338 has come now; but I dare not die. I cannot die, I tell you!”

He tried to raise himself into a sitting position, but the pain of his leg prevented him, and he fell back with a groan, and, waking up, murmured, “Oh for water, water!”

Jack quickly reached a cup of water which he had placed near at hand and held it to his lips.

“Who are you?” asked the hermit. “How came you here? Oh, I forgot. Yes; thanks.”

“That is the first civil word he has given me,” thought Jack, as he placed his knapsack as a pillow to support the head of the hermit. “I hope he is not going to be delirious. I wonder if I did the best I could with his leg? Pray God he may not die.”

The hermit was delirious before many hours, and poor Jack was really at his wits' end; but he did, I think, the best thing he could do under the circumstances, by continually bathing the head of the sick man with cold water.

During his delirium the hermit talked of his past life in terms of bitterest self-reproach, and of the possibility of death with terror. It seemed as if there was some terrible burden weighing upon the man's mind. At times he would call out, as he had before, that the vengeance of God had overtaken him, and entreat to live a little longer, that he might atone for the past. All his thoughts seemed to run upon some fancied expiation of his sins; and to a heart which had, like Jack Stanley's, just experienced the forgiveness of his sins, there was something page 339 horrible in this poor man's striving after some atonement to be made himself. All at once the truth flashed upon Jack's mind, although it was to him simply a conjecture.

“I do believe,” thought he, “very likely he may live in this ascetic state of misery and half-starvation through some idea of expiating his sins. Poor miserable man! what can he have done that weighs upon his conscience so? Why does not he ask forgiveness, whatever it is?”

Those were sad hours in which Jack Stanley sat by the side of the hermit, unable to do anything to help him, and listening to his self-reproaches; and he was startled beyond measure by the sick man's mutterings—they sounded so like “Poor Hope! poor Hope!” But Jack Stanley interpreted them to himself by supposing he meant that his own hopes of mercy and happiness were poor, and after a time forgot them. But the hermit was not going to die. To Jack's intense relief after awhile, the consciousness returned to his face, and, although he was as weak as a little child, he left off talking incoherently.

Jack's cooking was severely put to the test. He had a sort of prevailing idea that a sick man should not have solid food, and the fearful messes he made in the way of broth by dint of boiling up anything he could shoot, or gruel of flour and water—the former found amongst the stores of the invalid—were enough to make any one declare himself in robust health for the time to come at any cost. But he did his best, and no man can do more; and the result of his nursing was that the hermit began to page 340 recover. As his senses returned, so did his ungracious manner, and Jack could at times get not even a “thank you” for his trouble. But this did not interfere with his kindness, although, of course, it was unpleasant to have to attend to such a disagreeable patient.

The leg was evidently mending. By the hermit's own desire, Jack had unbound the splints and examined it, and Jack looked upon himself as fit for a diploma in surgery.

Again and again poor Jack deplored his loneliness, and wished for the company of his friend Bernard.

“Poor dear old Hope,” thought he, “imagine his being the son of Maitland! It can make no difference now; but if I had known it earlier, God only knows what folly or wickedness I might not have committed. How surprised he will be when he finds I know it! and I must tell him.”

“Come here,” said all at once the hermit, who had been lying with his eyes open, looking for some time past at Jack, who was seated not far from the hut.

“Well,” said Jack, going to him and standing before him.

You see, the two had not many forms of politeness between them.

“What made you look after me and see to me when I was laid on my back?” asked the hermit.

“Why, you could not look after yourself,” answered Jack: “that was one reason.”

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“I have treated you with the greatest rudeness from the first time I saw you,” resumed the hermit, “have I not?”

“Certainly—there is no doubt of that,” answered Jack, laughing.

“Then I cannot understand what induced you to behave as you have; it is not natural.”

“Never mind about that now,” said Jack; “you will make yourself feverish and ill if you excite yourself. Let us be friends.”

“Friends!” said the other. “I don't believe I ever had a friend in my life. I don't know what the word means.”

As he talked he raised one of his hands, gesticulating with it. Jack had several times observed his hands before, and now his attention was more than ever attracted to them, they were so evidently the hands of a gentleman.

Jack tried to quiet and soothe him by turning the conversation to something else. The hermit ceased talking after awhile; but later on in the day he said, without anything apparently having led to it,

“Give me your hand, young man. You are a very good fellow.”