"Wait a bit, honey," she answered, still rubbing vigorously, and working the little arms up and down in a way which perplexed Pat not a little. "We must get the little heart to work before we warm the little body, else the blood will run there and choke it, and it won't be able to beat again. Set the heart going first, and then we'll wrap him in blankets by the fire. That's what I have always been taught. And put the kettle right on the fire, sonny, and get the bath out ready. I do believe—praise the Lord!—that the darling is living still. If he is, and if he gets a bit better, a hot bath will restore him quicker than anything. And get that box of dried herbs and sea-weed from the cupboard. There are some rare good things there for rubbing the skin with. I've seen wonderful cures with them in my young days."
Pat was intensely excited as he watched his mother's quick and clever ministrations to the little boy, who already began to look different—less like a child of marble, and more like one of flesh and blood. It seemed very, very long to Pat before his mother looked up with kindling eyes to say he was still alive; but Eileen herself had been surprised at the quickness with which the little heart had begun to beat beneath her hands, and decided in her own mind that the child could not have been very long in the water before they saw him.
Pat ran from the kitchen, where his mother's operations were carried on, to the little room where Jim had been carried by Nat, and reported to each worker the success of the other. Jim very soon began to breathe again. He was not in the state the child had been, but he had evidently received some blow which had injured him in some way Nat could not at once determine. He awoke in great pain, and on trying to move himself became again unconscious; and Nat could only apply hot flannels to the side where the pain seemed to be worst, and get his wife, when she could spare the time, to mix him some of her simples, which had the effect of sending him off to sleep at last.
The little boy's case was different altogether. He seemed to have received no injury at all, but to be suffering simply from exposure and the length of time he had been in the water. The bath of herbs and pungent roots prepared by Eileen seemed to have a marvellous effect upon him, and he began to swallow the warm milk in teaspoonfuls which she gave him from time to time, each time with increased ease and eagerness.
"He likes it, mother," cried Pat excitedly; "I'm sure he likes it. I do wish he'd open his eyes and smile. Is he asleep, or what?"
"I hope he'll be asleep soon," answered Eileen, as she dried him by the fire, and prepared to lay him in her own well-warmed bed. "He's coming round beautiful, and if he doesn't get a fever on it, which I'm in hopes he won't after what I've done for him, he may wake up to know us in another few hours. But he'll be best in bed now; and so would you, honey. You've been up the whole night long, my little son. Shall mother put the pretty little boy to bed first, and then little Pat?"
It had not occurred to Pat before that he was tired; but now he found that he could only just keep his eyes open, and that his limbs were quite stiff from fatigue. So after seeing the little stranger boy put to bed, he consented to be undressed and fed himself. "Just as if I were a baby myself!" as he said sleepily; and his head had hardly touched the pillow before he fell fast, fast asleep, and slept for more hours at a time than he ever remembered to have done in all his life before.
