Like one in a daze, Dickon laid the boy down again among the leaves, and rose to his feet, still holding the burning sticks in his hand. The flames came painfully near to his flesh before he started into sense again.
Then he swiftly built a fire in a cleft among the rocks at the end of the little hollow, piling dry wood and leaves upon it till the blaze lighted up everything about. This done, he knocked off the waxen cover of his leather bottle, cut out the stopper, and kneeling once more, put its mouth to the dying lad's lips.
Strange tears came into his eyes as, after only a brief moment, those of his friend opened in truth, and gazed wonderingly upward at the luminous volume of ascending smoke. Then the slight frame shuddered piteously with a recurring chill, and the dread sleep fell upon it once more.
Dickon dragged him to the fire, piling leaves behind for support, and holding the lad's hands almost into the flames, so desperate did the strait seem to be. Then he stripped off his own leathern jacket, and wrapped it about Andreas.
He heaped fresh fuel on the fire, he rubbed the slender limbs for warmth with his rough hands, he forced more of the wine-drink down the boy's throat—all at once, as it were, in a frenzy of resolve that death should at all hazards be fought off.
And so it came about, for presently Andreas was sitting propped up upon the mound of leaves, smiling faintly with pleasure at the new warmth in his veins, and sucking bare the last bird-bones from the pie.
Dickon gnawed ravenously upon the smoky and half-cooked piece of tough meat he had cut from the ham of the boar, and watched the sweet spectacle of his friend restored to life, in an abstraction of dumb joy.
Andreas lifted his hand in air, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"It is Christmas eve!" he said. "I had forgotten!"
"So said the friar," Dickon mumbled between mouthfuls, tearing at the food meanwhile with his teeth. "He was in two minds about having me flogged, but for that. The monks have a fear of the king, they say, and on the days he marks for them durst not break bread for themselves. Thus this friar must needs fast to-day—so he said. How could the king know, if he slipped in some food while-times? He hath not been in these parts this many years."