He took it in the same shrinking way, evidently expecting a blow, and drank heavily once more.
“Well, he couldn’t ha’ swallowed much, Master George, else he wouldn’t be so thirsty,” said Morgan. “Now give this here one a dose, though it seems to me labour in vain; only it may make him go off a bit easy.”
He filled the baler, and I knelt down again to sprinkle the poor fellow’s temples, and trickle a few drops once more between his lips, the boy watching me the while, and then giving me the first notice of my father’s return by shuffling away in another direction.
“Poor wretch!” I heard my father mutter, as he gave me a piece of bread-cake, and pointed to the boy, before taking the cork from a bottle, and slowly dropping a spoonful or two of spirit between the man’s teeth.
After this he waited, and I saw that the boy was watching him wildly. Then he poured in a little more, without apparently the slightest effect, and after looking on for a few minutes, I advanced toward the boy, holding out the cake. But I stopped short, with my hand extended, looking at him, and then, as he took no notice of the cake, but stared wildly at me, I broke off a few crumbs, and began to eat before him, treating him as I would have treated some savage creature I wished to tame, and breaking off a piece and throwing it within his reach.
Then I went on eating again, and after a time I saw his hand steal slowly to the bread, his eyes fixed on mine, and he snatched the piece and conveyed it to his mouth with a motion that was wonderful from its rapidity.
This I repeated two or three times before feeling that I ought now to have won his confidence a little, when I went close to him, put down the cake, and went back to kneel by my father, whose hand was upon the man’s throat.
“Is he getting better?” I said.
There was a shake of the head, and I looked then with a feeling of awe at the black face before me, with the eyes so close that there was just a gleam of the white eyeballs visible; but as I gazed, I fancied I saw a jerking motion in the throat, and I whispered to my father to look.
“A good sign, or a bad one, my boy,” he whispered. “You had better go now, back to the house.”