George colored. “You are right, lad—it was a long while ago, and I am vexed for mentioning it. Well, any way you are come back and you are welcome. Now you shall do a little of the light work, but I'll do all the heavy work because I'm used to it;” and indeed poor George did work and slave like Hercules; forty times that day he carried a full-sized sheep in his hands a distance of twenty yards and flung her into the water and splashed in and rubbed her back in the water.
The fourth day after Jacky's return George asked him to go all over the ground and tell him how many sheep he saw give signs of the fatal disorder.
About four o'clock in the afternoon Jacky returned driving before him with his spear a single sheep. The agility of both the biped and quadruped were droll; the latter every now and then making a rapid bolt to get back to the pasture and Jacky bounding like a buck and pricking her with a spear.
For the first time he found George doing nothing. “Dis one scratch um back—only dis one.”
“Then we have driven out the murrain and the rest will live. A hard fight! Jacky, a hard fight! but we have won it at last. We will rub this one well; help me put her down, for my head aches.”
After rubbing her a little George said, “Jacky, I wish you would do it for me, for my head do ache so I can't abide to hold it down and work, too.”
After dinner they sat and looked at the sheep feeding. “No more dis,” said Jacky gayly, imitating a sheep rubbing against a tree.
“No! I have won the day; but I haven't won it cheap. Jacky, that fellow, Abner, was a bad man—an ungrateful man.”
These words George spoke with a very singular tone of gravity.
“Never you mind you about him.”