I was in despair, but the doctor still bade me hope.
“Time works wonders, Joe,” he said. “His bodily health is improving wonderfully, and at last that must act upon his mind.”
“But it does not,” I said. “He has walked at least six miles to-day as if in a dream. Oh, doctor!” I exclaimed, “we cannot take him back like this. You keep bidding me hope, and it seems no use.”
He smiled at me in his calm satisfied way.
“And yet I’ve done something, Joe,” he said. “We found him—we got him away—we had him first a hopeless invalid—he is now rapidly becoming a strong healthy man.”
“Healthy!”
“In body, boy. Recollect that for years he seems to have been kept chained up by the savages like some wild beast, perhaps through some religious scruples against destroying the life of a white man who was wise in trees and plants. Likely enough they feared that if they killed such a medicine-man it might result in a plague or curse.”
“That is why they spared us both,” said Mr Francis, who had heard the latter part of our conversation; “and the long course of being kept imprisoned there seemed to completely freeze up his brain as it did mine. That and the fever and blows I received,” he said excitedly. “There were times when—”
He clapped his hands to his head as if he dared not trust himself to speak, and turned away.
“Yes, that is it, my lad,” said the doctor quietly; “his brain has become paralysed as it were. A change may come at any time. Under the circumstances, in spite of your mother’s anxiety, we’ll wait and go slowly homeward. Let me see,” he continued, turning to a little calendar he kept, “to-morrow begins the tenth month of our journey. Come, be of good heart. We’ve done wonders; nature will do the rest.”