“Where is he? At your place?”
“Nay–y–y! He’s trudging along after me. I said I’d fetch the doctor to him, poor fellow, but he just found words enough to say he’d come after me, and he crept along. Yes,” continued the American, turning to the door. “Here he comes. Do what you can for him, and send him back to me; he can have one of the sheds and as much husk as he likes to lie on for the time he wants it, and I don’t think that’ll be long.”
“I dare say we can do that for him, poor fellow,” said the doctor coldly, as he stepped towards the door, and then uttered an exclamation. “For goodness’ sake, Bourne, look here!”
Both his companions and the boys hurried to the door
to look out where a strange, gaunt-looking, grey-haired figure came creeping along in the hot sunshine, walking painfully by the help of a stout six-foot stick.
At the first glance the red-brown skin drawn so tightly over his face made him resemble a mummy more than a living being, while his worn canvas and skin garments clung so tightly to him that his bodily aspect was horribly suggestive of a clothed skeleton.
Upon seeing that he was observed he stopped short, leaning forward resting heavily upon the stick, to which he clung, peering from beneath the shadow cast by his bony brows, while his eyes, deeply sunken in their orbits, seemed to literally glow.
The next moment he turned slowly towards a rough bench fixed beneath a shade-giving tree and sank slowly down with his back to the trunk, stretching out a long thin hand towards the doctor, while his dry greyish lips moved as if appealing naturally to him, the man he believed able to give that which he sought—help.
“Ugh! How horrible!” whispered Chris to his companion. “If I had seen him lying down I should have thought that he was dead.”