“Young shaver,” panted the man. “Found big house yonder, half burnt. Five dead folk, and this here.”
“Oh, Joe!” cried the woman, taking her husband’s burden from him, sinking upon her knees, and laying the head of a handsome little fellow of about eight against her breast, to begin rocking herself to and fro and sobbing bitterly. “Oh, the wicked cruel wretches! To go and murder a poor little boy like this! Look at his face! Look at his hair, half burned off, and the rest all blood. Oh! If you were men you’d ketch and kill some of ’em for this.”
A low growl arose from the soldiers around, and Tom Jones sniffed, drew his bugle round from where it hung at his back, and dropped two silent tears in its mouth.
“You Tom,” cried Mrs Beane, “don’t stand sniffing and snivelling there like a great bull calf. Take the tin dipper and fetch it full of clean water. Oh, Joe, Joe! It’s too late. The poor little darling’s dead.”
“Warn’t when I fun’ him,” said the corporal. “He’d crep’ away a bit, and he moved one hand.”
“Yes, and he’s warm still,” cried the woman excitedly. “Here, you men, clear off. You go and serve out the mess, Joe. Never mind me.”
“But you’ll want a bit o’ dinner, missus; and I found two ripe melons up in the garden there, but I left ’em behind.”
“Don’t talk to me about melons and dinners,” cried the woman angrily. “Go and get your own, all of you; and how much longer’s that boy going to be?”
Not many minutes before he appeared, not with the tin dipper but a whole bucketful of clear cold water, forgetting all about his sore feet; and while the men went and sat round the iron pot of savoury hotch-potch, Tom Jones stayed behind to help bathe and bandage the head of the handsome little fellow upon whose sunburned face more than one hot tear fell, as loving hands made him up a temporary bed of great-coats in the shade.
“Oh, Tom, Tom!” sobbed the big rough coarse woman, as she knelt there at last after doing all she could, “many’s the time that I’ve prayed that I might have a little boy to call my own; but Heaven knows best, and he might have lived to die like this.”